Wednesday, July 29, 2020

Olympic Peninsula (Saturday, July 11th, 2020)

The Olympic Peninsula is big and diverse, and has so much to explore.  We could easily take a week to really enjoy it, but for us it will just be a day trip.

Our first stop today was Sequim Bay State Park.  All of the state parks in Washington require the Discover Pass, but they also have free 15 minute parking at the restrooms so people without a pass can still stop in and use the restrooms.  

There is a pier and small boat launch ramp at this park.  The man in the picture below had just come in from crabbing.  He had great success, but unfortunately had to throw back all but one.

There is an area for tent camping and a separate area for RVs, and they were all either in use, or marked as reserved.  It was really nice to see people out enjoying nature.




As we drove through the town of Sequim, we noticed so many beautiful lavender farms.  They all had roadside stands for selling their lavender products, but none of them were open when we went through.



Just outside of Sequim is an area called the Dungeness Natural Wildlife Refuge.  It wasn't on our list of things to do, but it's signs attracted our attention and we decided we needed to take a look.

An overlook on the way in.



There is usually a fee for this area, but because of Covid, they have all of the trails set up for one way hiking with a round trip loop and no entrance fees to the park.  It was a beautiful hike in on the primitive trail.


This tree had such pretty eye lashes!






As we got down near the sound, they had the most amazing overlook of the Dungeness spit.












The signs keeping us moving in the right direction.


After leaving the Dungeness Spit, we made our way to Port Angeles. 



Several years ago, our kids found us a piece of land, high on a cliff, overlooking Juan De Fuca inlet to the sound.  It has the most spectacular views!  And a 300 foot sheer drop off.



Then we made our way toward the Olympic Mountains.  Our only view of the mountains for today.  It's just too cloudy.



There are several beaches along the western coast of the Olympics.





So we parked and made our way down to one...beach 4.







A beautiful hike to and from the beach.




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