This past weekend was Justine’s birthday! While we agree we don’t do gifts, it had been a while since we’d travelled properly and we were overdue for a trip. So I booked us a weekend away at a place we had been to a few years back - Lake Crescent Lodge in Olympic National Park in Washington State.

The lovely Lake Crescent Lodge, our home for the weekend.

A few years ago, Justine and I spent a weekend in Olympic National Park with our friends Stuart and Jo. It was a great weekend, and one we’ve reflected on often. Olympic National Park is in Washington State, on the Olympic Peninsula, directly south of Vancouver Island. It’s a little remote and difficult to get to. This makes it ideal for exploring! As we haven’t done any trips into the US since COVID, I thought it was long past time, and that it would be a great getaway for Justine’s birthday.

A map of the Olympic Peninsula. The red marker is where the Lodge is located at the north of the park.

We took Friday off, giving us a three-day weekend to relax, enjoy ourselves and explore. We were able to leave reasonably early on Friday morning, but as it was about a 5-hour drive down (including a short ferry ride), we weren’t going to see a lot on the first day. We got through the border easily enough, and after a quick stop at the Bellingham Costco for gas and provisions, continued the drive south.

At Mount Vernon, we headed west towards Anacortes, before crossing over Deception Pass and onto Whidby Island. I had really hoped to stop at Deception Pass State Park (it has an amazing bridge), but the weather was awful and it was raining really hard at that point. There wasn’t much point in stopping, and we were hoping to catch the 2:45 ferry from Coupeville to Port Townsend.

Our timing was almost perfect, as we arrived with only a few open spots available. We had a short wait until it was time for the ferry to depart.

The view off the front of the ferry as we departed Coupeville. The weather was not very nice…

The ferry was pretty quick - 20-30 minutes - and soon we were offloading in Port Townsend. It would have been nice to explore the town a little bit, but we didn’t really have the time. Instead, we continued west across the top of the peninsula. The weather started to clear for us for a bit, and we had noted the Dungeness National Wildlife Refuge. That looked interesting, so we decide to make a stop to stretch our legs and get some fresh air.

We pulled up to an empty parking lot with a view out over this long sand spit. It’s actually one of the world’s longest sand spits, with a 5-mile hike along the spit out to a lighthouse built offshore. We would have loved to do it, but there really wasn’t enough light left in the day. We’ll have to go back and try that another time. There were some birds about, but nothing really interesting or new. There was a pair of bald eagles up in one of the trees, trying to dry out. We wandered about for an hour or so before it was time to get back on the road.

The New Dungeness Lighthouse, from the beach

Down the beach from the parking lot were these cool houses on stilts. I guess they get some big tides.

A couple of views of some of the roads as we headed out towards Port Angeles.

We continued on into Port Angeles where we got provisioned up with some water, snacks and drinks for the lodge. We then continue the drive out to the Lodge. The drive is beautiful, especially as you reach the lake and the road snakes along the shoreline. It was starting to get towards dark as we finally arrived at Lake Crescent Lodge!

It was dark when we arrived, close to 6 p.m. It had been a long day on the road, but a good one. We got check into our room and booked a table for dinner at 7:00 in the Lodge restaurant.

Lake Crescent Lodge, originally called Singer's Lake Crescent Tavern, is a historic resort situated on the shores of Lake Crescent. In 1914 Avery and Julia Singer built a small hotel and cottages at Barnes Point on the shore of Lake Crescent, opening Singer's Tavern in 1915. At the time of its opening, the Tavern consisted of seven Lodge rooms, five of which are still in use today, and a series of cottages. As we did on our last visit, we booked one of the small Singer Cottages for our stay. They’re basic, but charming, and nicely self-contained.

The walk up to the Lodge. So much color still in the trees.

Looking out over Lake Crescent.

After getting settled in our room, we headed back to the Lodge to have a drink before dinner. One of the things that we love about the National Park Lodges are the common areas. As with many of them, this one has a nice big fireplace, and there was a fire going to ward off the chill of the evening. We grabbed a drink at the bar and settle in for a bit.

Our drinks before dinner.

Such a beautiful fireplace.

Dinner was at 7:00, and the menu was an interesting one. We decided to make this the “official” birthday dinner for Justine, and it did not disappoint. Justine had a beautiful piece of salmon, and I had this very interesting ramen dish, made with slow braised rabbit and all kinds of mushrooms and other goodes. We brought our own bottle of wine and very much enjoyed our meal. Sadly the bar was closed after we finished dinner, so we returned to our cottage and enjoyed our evening.

The next day we had lots to explore. On our last trip, we were unable to get up to Hurricane Ridge, so that was our first objective for the day. We got off to a fairly early start, and headed back towards Port Angeles. We made a stop at the Visitor Center to buy our pass and discovered that it had snowed overnight, so the road up to Hurricane Ridge was closed! Instead of doing that drive, we went as far up the road as we could, and decoded to hike the Heart O’ the Forest Trail. It looked like a nice, reasonable hike that we could do.

An original cabin at the visitor center.

Along the drive, as we headed up to the trailhead we stopped at an outlook just to see what the view looked like. While was not all that impressive, there was a red-tailed hawk sitting in a tree, drying out his wings. He was stationary, and made for some good photos.

We parked in the campground and got ourselves organized for the hike. We were expecting about 8 km (it ended up being a little longer), and we were not sure if it was going to rain, snow or be sunny. I think we ended up getting all three over the course of the morning.

The hike was nice - not too hard, but there was a bit of elevation change over the course of it. It mostly stayed along the ridge, then eventually worked its was down to a small river, where we turned around and headed back. There was a real mixture of old and new growth, and the types of trees changed throughout the hike. Mainly it was coniferous, but there was a stretch where it changed to deciduous, which was unexpected. There were some huge trees along the way, which are always great to see.

At the start of the hike we disturbed a couple of deer browsing in the forest.

A pretty typical view of the trail as it wound through the forest.

The underbrush was thick and lush.

A small waterfall along the way.

The trail did wind along the edge of the ridge for a large part of the hike.

There were lots of big trees to see. Photos just don’t do them justice.

The end of the hike was at this little river, right at the park boundary.

The hike took us until around lunch time. We made our way back into Port Angeles where we grabbed some food to go while we drove on to our next stop. There were two places that we were deciding between - Sol Duc where there’s a great waterfall and apparently salmon spawning, or the beach. As the weather had cleared and we had nice blue sky, we picked Rialto Beach.

As we were driving past Lake Crescent, we got some blue skies and a beautiful view back over the lake.

The drive out to the beach was fine - nothing too exciting, but it was nice to see the sun and some blue skies for a change. We had been to this beach on our last visit, where our friend Stuart got swamped by a rogue wave - always pay attention to the ocean! So good memories. The tide was much higher this time, and it was rough!

It’s a big beach, and you can literally walk for miles in either direction. We had a nigh short hike up the beach.

It was really rough. Even with the blue skies, you would not want to be on the water.

I had hoped to get up to the rocks in the distance, but we didn’t quite make it that far.

It’s a pretty great beach for walking and exploring.

This was our turn-around point. While there was a way to cross the river, we really didn’t feel like doing it. So we turned around.

Some of the driftwood is just huge!

As the sun started to sink, the light got quite atmospheric.

It’s a bit scary to think of the forces that pulled this tree out of the ground and washed it up on the beach.

The piles of driftwood on the beach are immense. It’s hard to imagine how long it’s taken for them to pile up.

Just off the beach, the forest starts. It’s a rough environment - all the ones closest to the water are dead.

The beach is littered with huge logs and dead trees.

Some of the offshore islands.

We stuck around until sunset, hoping that we might get a spectacular one with all the clouds.

Sadly, the great sunset never materialized. We sat on this huge driftwood log, had a beer and a snack and watched the sunset.

As the sun set, the temperatures dropped and we decided it was time to head back to the lodge. We decided we didn’t need a proper meal, but snacked on a bunch of the food we had in the room, relaxed and watched some shows on the iPad. It really was a pretty great day, and we wrapped it up by relaxing. We only had one more day ahead of us, so we also needed to decide on what to do.

Overnight is had been cold and rainy - and it looked like at slightly higher elevation there had been a fair bit of snow. We decided to have breakfast in the lodge, and again the food was really tasty. After that we got ourselves organized, checked out and the truck packed. We did a bit of a walk around the property. checked out the lake and got a last look.

It was quiet inside as we headed for breakfast.

Looking out over the dock, you could see the snow line coming down the mountain on the other side of the lake.

We had some hard choices to make about how we’d spend our last day. The Olympic Peninsula is pretty large,and the roads only really do around it. We had wanted to head to the far south end of the park to do a drive through the rain forest, but that was a long way to go. We also wanted to see more of the beaches and the Hoh Rainforest and the Hall of Moss. So we decided we’d stay more to the north, try and get to Sol Duc (I really wanted to see salmon spawning), go to Hoh and then head back home the way we came.

As we were heading west, the views of the lake were amazing. We stopped at this little picnic site, right on the lake to take a few photos and enjoy the amazing views - snow on the trees and some blue sky!

We were ready to explore!

The lake was beautiful in the bright sunshine.

You could see where the snow from the night before was coming down the treeline.

After that short stop, we headed to the road down to Sol Duc - only to find that they had closed it because of the snow! That was very disappointing, as I wanted to see the waterfall and the salmon. But it was like a 7 mile hike in, and we didn’t really have time for that. So we continued on.

We headed south and then drove back east into the middle of the park, to go to the Hoh rainforest and walk the Hall of Moss trail. We had done this last time, and it left a pretty big impression on us. The drive in was beautiful, with expansive view over the river and up to the mountains.

The views around this area were just amazing.

It was surprisingly busy at the visitor center and on the trails. But what struck me the most was how dry everything looked. The moss was not looking healthy, and from what we could tell from the visitor center, they had been hit hard by lack of rain - in the rainforest. Not a good sign.

It was cold, wet and snowy, but so beautiful!

I don’t normally like other people in my photos, but this gives you a good sense of the size of the trees and the moss!

After visiting the rainforest, we headed back out to the beaches. We made a stop at a few different places, but spent the most time at two of them. The first was Ruby Beach. You park up on the cliff then walk down a well maintained trail to the beach. It gives you the best of both worlds - great views from up high plus easy access to the water.

Looking down at Ruby Beach from the lookout.

It’s an expansive view, looking miles up the shoreline.

Ruby Beach has some pretty cool rock formations to explore.

A closer look at the rocks formations.

The rugged coastline is just spectacular.

We explore the beach for a little while, before heading on to our next stop. This one ended up being a bit of an impromptu stop -we saw a sign on the side of the road for a “Big Cedar”. So we pulled off down this really rough little road that lead into the forest. The sign did not lie - this was easily the biggest cedar tree I’ve seen. Sadly, it was pretty much dead, and had seen better days. Still impressive.

From there we continued south along the highway, ending our exploration at Kalaloch Lodge. We were quite impressed with this place, and we think we’d like to come back and stay here in the future. They have these great looking little cabins, all perched on a cliff overlooking the ocean. There’s a huge expanse of sandy beach, and it looks like a great place to explore the more southern end of the park.

Kalaloch Lodge

The river, rushing out of the rainforest.

The river carves a channel through the sand as it crosses the beach.

They’ve built a retaining wall of logs to protect their stairs down to the beach.

Looking back at the cabins.

It’s a huge expanse of sandy beach.

It was about 3:00 p.m. and we needed to make our way home. It was going to be a long drive and it needed coordinating with the ferry back across to the mainland. We retraced our steps back to Port Angeles where we decide to stop for dinner. We really only had one ferry we could catch, and it left at about 7:30.

We found a cool pub and had a nice dinner. From there, we made the dash to Port Townsend. We were in good time and the ferry wasn’t too full. The crossing was nice and easy, and from there we worked our way back north towards the border. It was almost 11:30 by the time we were back home in Vancouver - it was a very long day.

The weekend had been a lot of fun and we had some great experiences. The Olympic Peninsula is an amazing place to explore,a nd there’s lots more we didn’t get to, so we’ll need to go back!