Olympic National Park: Beaches and Hoh Rain Forest

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After a week in Port Angeles, on the north side of the Olympic Peninsula, we and our friends Jason and Lisa drove our RVs about 60 miles to the west side of the peninsula, not far from the coast. We stayed near the tiny Quileute town of La Push, about 10 minutes from the slightly larger town of Forks–made famous to some (not us) by the Twilight series of books and movies.

With several days of rain in the forecast, we headed out early in our stay to explore two of the area’s scenic beaches. Our first stop was at Rialto Beach, part of which lies within the boundaries of Olympic National Park, while the rest is on the Quileute Nation Reservation.

On the short walk to the beach through a huge pile of driftwood, we spotted an American bald eagle enjoying a tasty seafood lunch on a tree branch above us. He had the fish draped over the branch so he could carefully pick at it without needing to hold onto it while he ate. Cheryl had to zoom far in to get the photo, which is why it’s a bit pixellated.

The waters of the Pacific Ocean were churning with waves, and mist filled the air ahead of the coming storm system. Jason and Lisa had to watch out for “sneaker” waves behind them while we took this photo.

We elected to remain a bit further from the edge of the surf, especially since the tide was on the way in.

A driftwood log on the beach nicely framed the sea stacks just offshore, partially shrouded in fog and mist.

Rialto Beach is covered with millions of small rocks, worn down and polished smooth by years of relentless wave action.

The intense ocean waves on this part of the beach were dramatic to watch, and the sound of them breaking against the shore was mesmerizing.

Jason watched the surf from atop one of the driftwood logs, his jacket a splotch of bright red contrasting with the rest of the otherwise monochromatic scene.

We left Rialto Beach and drove a short distance south to the creatively-named Second Beach on the Olympic Wilderness Coast. (And in case you’re wondering, yes, it is between First Beach and Third Beach.) Accessing Second Beach required a hike of just under a mile, up and over the wooded hills that separate the seashore from the road. Along the trail, we passed many interesting old-growth trees, like this one that long ago took root in a “nurse log”–a downed tree on the forest floor that provides a habitat for new life as it decays. Once the nurse log had rotted away, the new tree appeared to be on stilts. We saw quite a few trees like this–many of them much larger than this one.

The top of this huge tree’s central trunk had broken off, but it continued to grow by extending “arms” nearly as thick as the original trunk out to the sides and then upward.

Visitors had stuck smooth rocks into all the nooks and crannies of this old snag. At least people weren’t spoiling the rest of the landscape by stacking rocks elsewhere along the trail or on the beach.

And near the “rock tree”, we found our very first Pacific banana slug of this trip. Slugs are so prevalent in this area (we found a bunch of them around our RV campsite after a couple of days of rain) that they have their very own Olympic Slugs page on the National Park Service’s website.

The hike to Second Beach took longer than we expected, but as we neared the end of the trail, one of the sea stacks offshore loomed through the mist like something out of a high fantasy film.

Unlike Rialto Beach, Second Beach is covered with sand rather than rocks.

The surf here at Second Beach wasn’t nearly as rough as it had been earlier at Rialto Beach, either.

The flat, shallow slope of the beach and slightly calmer water created some nice reflections of the sky and the sea stacks. The sea-carved arch at the far right is known as Hole-in-the-Wall, for obvious reasons.

The following day, we drove an hour further south along Highway 101 to the Hoh Rain Forest in Olympic National Park. This temperate rainforest averages 140 inches of precipitation per year (although it’s been somewhat drier so far this year), providing a perfect environment for a lush, green canopy of coniferous and deciduous trees overhead with mosses and ferns blanketing the surfaces below. The rainforest once stretched along the Pacific coast from southeastern Alaska to the central coast of California.

We walked the aptly-named Hall of Mosses Trail in the Hoh Rain Forest. Along the way, we passed many young trees and other plants growing on nurse logs like this one, as well as grand “colonnades” of mature trees that had taken root on nurse logs that had long since decayed.

This moss-covered tree formed a natural arch over the trail.

It’s difficult to appreciate the sheer size of the standing trees, but this 190-foot-long giant cedar that had fallen along the trail (or rather, that the trail had been built beside) gave us a better idea of just how tall they are. You can see only part of the tree in this photo; the rest of the trunk had broken off on the hillside down the trail.

We were glad that we’d gotten out to see the beaches and rain forest early in our stay, because Friday brought almost 24 continuous hours of rain as an “atmospheric river” passed over the Pacific Northwest. The next few days were less wet, but still damp, gray, and cool, so we had some time to catch up on tasks around the RV before we head to our next destination.