Hoh, Hoh, Hoh

Saturday, August 20, 2011

We were up this morning and left the campground around 8:30.  We decided to have breakfast somewhere down the road.  The road was south on route 101.  We turned east on the Upper Hoh Road toward the Hoh Rain Forest Visitor’s Center.  The drive through the tall conifers with the road bordered with moss and ferns and with an occasional glimpse of the Hoh River is just gorgeous.   There hasn’t been any rain for a week or so and the locals say the rivers are really low.  Can you believe a rain forest without rain! We arrived at the VC and took care of the stamps for the Passport Books in fairly short order.  We got there fairly early, which was good because there was lots of traffic going in as we were going out.

Wilma at the huge tree.

We stopped a little way outside of the Olympic National Park boundary where Wilma and Betty served up a breakfast of French toast, eggs and turkey sausage.  Eating camp food all the time will really bulk you up.  After breakfast Barney went down to the river with a fly rod and flailed around a while to scare the fish away.  We didn’t want them to attack anyone.  A couple of the braver fish attacked the bug, but just enough to scare Barney.. they were not really serious about being caught.  After an hour or so we loaded up and headed back to Route 101.

Betty at the same tree. They said it is
1,000 years old.

We made a quick pass through Ruby Beach and found that the campground was full as was the day use area.  The next stop was the Kalaloch Information Station, also in the Olympic National Park.  We got the Passport Books stamped and got a little “ranger humor” like; “When you went to Cape Disappointment, were you really disappointed?”   Betty showed the ranger her Lighthouse Stamp Book and asked her if she had a stamp for the lighthouse on Destruction Island.   The ranger said she did not have a stamp but that she would make a call and check it out.

Can you see the lighthouse?

We continued a couple of miles south on route 101 to South Beach Campground.  This is really a no frills campground, no hook-ups, which is not unusual for an Olympic National Park, but also no potable water.  The place was just loaded with campers in tents, trailers and a few motor homes thrown in for good measure.   You couldn’t tell were one camp stopped and the next one began.  In fact it looked like there was a tornado at Camping World and everything that was picked by the wind was just dropped at South Beach.  All that aside, it is a beautiful beach in a lovely setting.

We have been on the road for a week and a half, most of that in the North Cascades, Seattle area, and the Olympic Peninsula.  The weather has been wonderful; sunny but not too hot with a light breeze.  We had a little rain going up the east side of the Cascades and a little fog on Whidbey Island, but other than that it has been beautiful.

We made a stop for Passport stamps at the Quinault Rain Forest Ranger Station on the North Shore Road of Lake Quinault, where Wilma impressed the ranger with her passport book and also convinced a lady in the ranger station that she should go right out and buy books for her entire family, including her in-laws. 

The last stop was at the US Forest Service/National Park Service Information Center on the South Shore Road at Lake Quinault.  We snuck in just as they were closing at 4:10 and got the Passport Books stamped and made a quick get-away.  We went to the Willaby Campground near the information center and stopped long enough to eat supper in their day-use area.

What a great meal. We "eat out" a lot.

This is the beautiful lake beside our
table while we ate supper.

Then, back to route 101 to Aberdeen, WA where we are located in the Wal-Mart parking lot.  Seems like every camping spot in the area is filled and will probably stay that way for the weekend.

B