Washington State National Parks

Olympic Peninsula vista

We have spend a magnificent week or so travelling around Washington State, USA. It has been an opportunity to get used to driving and living in the campervan, and so far it has been great. We even bought a mini doormat to help keep our cosy home clean. There are a few of those typical camping-stlye chores - finding clean water, campsite, etc, but we've even managaed to 'dump' out our tanks successfully a few times!
We spent a few days circling around the Olympic Ranges National Park. It is right on the north western peninsula of Washington and is huge, with wet forests and great old trees (some up to 550 years old). We went for a walk through one forest to some natural hot springs one day, dipping our legs into the luxuriously warm water (though smelly). We also visited the Hoh Rainforest. We did several small walks, seeing mossy old trees (the moss was sometimes 1 metre long and actually waved in the wind) and crashing rivers.

Ancient mossy trees

For anyone who has read the Twilight series of books, they are set around this peninsula. We visited Port Angeles and the township of Forks, where most of the scenes are set. The townsfolk have certainly capitalised on the popularity of the novels, and you can't walk 5 metres without seeing a sign advertising Twilight memorabilia (or saying that a character 'shops here' or 'eats here'). We even went into the souvenir store which was specifically directed towards selling merchandise relating to the books - an entire store!
We visited a place called 'Ruby Beach' right on the coast (the last beach we'll see for a while!). It was protected and we saw wonderful sea stars, and driftwood. Dave wants to rename it 'skimming stone' beach as there was a river running into the sea with the best skimming stones ever! Quite amazing though - forests, rivers and the sea all in one location.



Sea stars at Ruby Beach

We spent one night in a state forest of some description. We will forever remember it as 'Bogan Woods'. We arrived at about 2 pm or so, and until 7-8pm there were about 500 shots heard further up the woods as the bogans shot every living and non-living thing in the vicinity (both rifle and shotgun blasts). To make the scene even more idyllic, 6 motorbike bogans revved their way around the campgrounds, drinking Bud and generally talking about shooting things and the Republican party.

A little friend

Happily, we then moved on to probably the best place we've been to yet - Mt Rainier National Park! The park is centred around the mountain, a magnificent snow-capped beast. It has a 93 mile walking trail circling it called the Wonderland trail. There are about 6 glaciers running in all directions down from the 14,600 foot summit (sorry for the imperial). Overall it is an astonishingly varied place. We walked through wet forests in the morning and then travelled as high up as we could get by road in the afternoon, with the temperature at 0 degrees C and snow everywhere.
Somehow Dave convinced Mel to climb to Panorama point which is at about 7,000 feet (the walk is about a 500 metre elevation over 2 miles). It was also predominantly on snow. We had the walking boots, but were bereft of snow poles. We ended up walking up through the clouds, and after an hour of fun, we decided to turn back as we heard from other walkers that we would not be able to get through the clouds even if we reached our destination. We saw a cascade mountain fox hiding in the cloud up there, and when we stopped for a quiet look around a deer appeared just 5 metres away from us on a journey somewhere. We also slipped over amusingly a few times (when we say 'we', we mean Mel).





Mel 'walking'