Ockey Family Adventures: Seattle Day 4

Today our main purpose was moving from Olympic to Mount Rainier. It was a quite a few hours of driving, but we did squeeze a few final adventures out of Olympic before we left.

After saying goodbye to beautiful Lake Crescent, our first stop was Madison Falls. It was a very short walk to the falls, but they were quite beautiful, and surprisingly similar to Marymere Falls that we had seen the day before. This was a very brief stop before we moved on to Port Angeles.

We loved staying at Lake Crescent.

It was hard to leave this beautiful view.

Seth fights us on wearing a sweatshirt.

This trail was simple, but we have to try out all the benches.

There are lots of lovely falls in Olympic.

Park headquarters for Olympic is in Port Angeles, so we stopped and turned in the Junior Ranger booklets. They didn't have badges, but promised to send some. The boys also earned the Seashore Protector patch, which will look great in their books.

The visitor center was small, but had some fun exhibits.

We continued up to the last section of the park that we could fit in, which is called Hurricane Ridge. There is a hike called Hurricane Hill right at the end of the road, but it is impossible to park, so we didn't know if we could do it. Of course, we pulled up and found someone leaving, so we started up the trail.

This trail was a little longer and a lot steeper! In fact, it climbed to the very top of the world, which allowed you to turn around 360 degrees and see everything from Mount Olympus to Vancouver Island. It was completely different from the rainforest and the coast we'd been exploring. It reminded us most of Rocky Mountain National Park.

The views are amazing!

We were so excited to see this blue grouse.

The teenage blue gouse was way cuter.

So grateful for family pictures.

The ocean fog was settled in the valley.

Mom and Seth hiked in the back on this steep hike.

Along the way we saw some pretty animals. Several black tailed deer were out with their fawns. Rare Olympic marmots were running through the meadows. We even saw a blue grouse with a few of her grown chicks. She was clucking softly to them on the side of the trail. We'd heard that there were a lot of elk in this part of Washington, but we never saw one.

You can see Canada in the background.

It was windy up top, but we got a second family pic.

Mark loved this hike because we saw so many animals.

The Olympic Mountains aren't that tall, but they were extra pretty on this day.

Dax is growing up!

He has always been the climber of the family!

This deer ran right along the ridge in front of us.

We had fun watching her run by!

Seth found a little snowman that someone had built.

This hike was a winner!

We saw the Olympic Marmot.

We did a second, shorter hike at the Visitor Center called Cirque Nature Trail. Then we ate lunch out of the back of the vehicle.

There were gray jays hanging out by the Visitor Center.

The boys have hiked a lot in the last few days.

I like this pic. Shows how much Dax looks up to Mark.

From Port Angeles it was over 5 hours to Packwood. With a stop for groceries and a stop for fastfood, it took us the rest of the day. As we pulled into the tiny town of Packwood we finally found the elk. They were standing in empty fields, and sometimes next to houses grazing on grass or eating apples out of the trees.

We pulled up at our small cabin. It had three cute little rooms upstairs and a master bedroom downstairs. While Mom and Dad worked on packing and planning, the boys played cards until after bedtime. We loved the little cabin, and were glad we were staying for a few nights.