Blog

Olympic National Park: Beaches and Hoh Rain Forest

After a week in Port Angeles, we drove to the west side of the peninsula, not far from the coast. With several days of rain in the forecast, we headed out early in our stay to explore two of the area’s scenic beaches and the Hoh Rain Forest, one of the finest remaining examples of temperate rainforest in the United States and one of Olympic National Park’s most popular destinations.

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Olympic National Park: Hurricane Ridge and Sol Duc Valley

Our RV park near Port Angeles, Washington gave us a good base from which to explore the northern side of Olympic National Park. The huge national park occupies most of the center of Washington’s Olympic Peninsula, but there are no roads within the park connecting its various hiking and sightseeing destinations. It can take several hours of driving to get between these points on Highway 101, which rings the park. So instead, we planned to visit Hurricane Ridge, Lake Crescent, and the Sol Duc Valley from Port Angeles, and then move around the peninsula to visit other parts of the park.

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Recap of our six weeks in Florence (video)

Richard, one of our fellow Road Scholars, assembled this beautiful 4:16 video summarizing our six weeks together in Florence. He showed it at our farewell lunch on Saturday, but was kind enough to send us all a copy to share. It’s a great recap of this fabulous trip.

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Boboli Garden and farewell lunch

On our last full day in Florence, we walked through the Giardino Boboli (Boboli Garden), one of the few places on our “must see” list that we hadn’t yet visited, and then bade farewell to our Road Scholar classmates and group leaders over yet another fabulous meal.

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Winding down

Today was the final day of language classes for three people from our Road Scholar group enrolled in the Classical Italian course (the others, in the Survival Italian course, had their last class the day before). We were all starting to pack up and prepare to head home, but we met together for dinner in the evening.

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Bardini Gardens and symphony

With just three days remaining, we were trying to cram in a few more experiences that we’d missed so far, including a walk through the Giardino Bardini. Then in the evening, our group all got dressed up to attend a symphony in the city’s beautiful modern concert hall.

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