During the last week of our 2012 Fall Road Trip Duke and I spent four nights on the Olympic Peninsula. We stayed in the four different National Park Lodges in the Park. The weather was sunny and warm and we had a marvelous time.
After taking the ferry from Victoria to Port Angeles we drove to Lake Crescent Lodge. Coincidentally the night that we were there was the 75th anniversary of President Franklin Roosevelt staying there. Our room in the lodge overlooked the lake.
In the morning we had coffee on the porch.
The next morning we hiked from Crescent Lake to Marymere Falls
Then we drove to Sol Duc Hot Springs. We hiked to Mink Lake and had a picnic then came back to Sol Duc where we were spending the night and soaked in the hot springs.
On day three on the Olympic Peninsula we drove to the Hoh Rain Forest Visitor Center and took another short hike and had another picnic lunch.
As we were leaving the Hoh Rain Forest we saw the only elk we saw on the whole trip.
We spent our third night in the park at Kalaloch Lodge on the coast. We had a fantastic room in the lodge with 180 degree windows from which we enjoyed a magnificent sunset.
Sunday morning we went for a walk on the beach. Duke built a bit of a bridge across the creek that was entering the Pacific there and I crossed it with no problem going north. But on the way back I lost my balance and fell in!
After I changed into dry clothes we drove to Lake Qunault Lodge and took another short hike. Lake Qunault Lodge reminded me of the lodge in the movie Dirty Dancing. It was such a nice sunny warm day that we sat on the beach reading for awhile.
From Lake Qunault we left the Olympic National Park for the last time. We stopped at Gray's Harbor Historical Seaport and visited The Spar Shop where they have the largest tracer-lathe in North America. They make masts and spars and anything else that needs to be turned on a really big lathe. The lathe operators showed us around and told us they can turn logs up to 40 inches in diameter and 122 feet in length.
The Lady Washington Tall Ship had just returned from a cruise and was moored nearby.
We stopped in Olympia to tour the Washington State Capital.
Then we headed to Tacoma to spend the night with my sister and her family.
On October 9th we headed south to Bend Oregon. We had some wonderful views of Mount Rainier.
From Bend we drove home to Reno. It was a wonderful trip. If you would like to see all of our pictures from the trip they are available on Flickr here.
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