Since we were flying out of Seattle after our Alaskan cruise, I decided to add an additional week in Washington. My dad grew up there and I still have relatives that live there that I haven’t seen in over 20 years. Our plan was to spend the night in Seattle then get up the next morning and drive to Prosser to visit my grandmother’s grave. Then we were going to return to Yakima and have dinner with my Aunt, my cousin and her husband and one of her daughters and her husband. We planned on spending the next day at Mount Ranier, followed by a day at Mount St Helen, then one full travel day up the Pacific coast and end up with two days at Forks before heading back to Seattle to fly home.
Although we slept in the first morning in order to miss rush hour traffic when leaving Seattle, we still managed to get stuck in stop and go traffic. Once we got out of the metropolitan area we settled in for nice drive that took us over the Snoqualmie Pass. We were making good time and Jeff was complaining about a tooth that he had broke while we were on the cruise. I goggled dentists in Prosser and called to see if I could find one to fit him in and get the rough edges ground down and then get him into our dentist at home. Lucky us, they would fit him in so we estimated our arrival time and managed to get to the cemetery in Prosser before going to the dentist. Once he was in the dentist chair they went right to work and ended up replacing the crown so it would be a couple hours before he was finished. I left him at the dentist and went to my favorite place in Prosser – Chuckar Cherries – and did some retail therapy. They are the best cherries in the world!
I texted my cousin Pam and told her what time I thought we would be at her home. As soon as Jeff was finished at the dentist we hit the road again. I put the address into Google maps and we made it within a block of their house but ended up at the wrong place because I had the house number wrong. We got that figured out and got to visit with my Aunt Arlene, cousin Pam and her husband Reed for about an hour before we headed to dinner.
At the restaurant we were joined by Pam’s daughter Michelle and her husband Randy. We enjoyed a wonderful dinner, had a great visit and returned to my Aunt’s house for dessert. It was great to catch up. The last time I was in Washington was for my Grandmother’s 90th birthday. Trent was 6 months old then … so yeah, it has been a few years.
We got up early the next morning and headed out for Mount Rainier park. It was a very pleasant morning but once we got to a higher elevation we ran into a lot of fog. Lucky for us, it was the middle of the week and there was very little traffic. We felt like we had the road to ourselves. Once we got to our first trail head we started encountering a few people. Our first hike was an easy out and back on the same trail to the “Grove of the Patriarchs.” This trail ends at a group of Douglas Firs that are over 1000 years old. The just over 2 mile trail followed a beautiful, clear stream and we were surrounded by huge trees.
From here we were headed to the Jackson Visitor center on the south side of Mt. Rainer. We were going to pick up a trail head here but the parking lot was full. The back up plan was to go the Reflection Lakes, park there, hike up to the Visitor Center, continue hiking up to Mrytle Falls and then hike back down to the car. This was SUPPOSED to be a circular trail at a little over 5 miles. At the end of the day we had ended up hiking 11, nearly 12 miles, so I guess I added up the mileage on the trail map incorrectly (oops!).
This was a fabulous hike and the only place we encountered people was close to the visitor’s center. What we did encounter was snow on the trail! … In July!! There wasn’t much, just enough to make it difficult to cross in one place and make the trail really mucky in a couple of other spots. We made due in shorts with jackets around our waists just in case the weather turned and carried water and snacks. It stayed cloudy the entire time we were hiking, which made for a very pleasant hike, but prevented us from seeing Mount Rainer in all her glory. The clouds did clear off later when we checked into our hotel at Packwood and we were able to get a clear picture. We saw one critter on the trail, a marmot which is a big rodent, and one deer close to the car at the end of the hike. We were pooped when we got back to the car and if asked under oath I would say that the majority of the trail was uphill although I know that’s probably not possible.
We checked into our hotel in Packwood, went to a bar for dinner that a friend of Randy’s recommended, took some Aleve and called it a VERY LONG day.
We were up early the next morning and headed on the back roads to the east side of Mount St Helen. We were travelling through old growth forest, thick on both sides of the road. The coolest thing happened … an owl (at least a four foot wing span) flew across the road in front of us AND we both saw it! That was definitely a WHOA moment.
We planned on hiking the Norwood trail which would give us great views of St Helen’s and Spirit Lake. This trail was supposed to be about 8 miles round trip. We started out on a fairly level trail but it didn’t take long before we started gaining some good elevation. We walked up and around one mountain only to encounter another one to walk up and around gaining elevation the entire time. I don’t know if this was a harder trail or if it was only harder because we did 11 miles the day before. I will say that it was really steep in quite a few places so we took plenty of “catch my breath” breaks. We weren’t as fortunate as the previous day and had to deal with lots of sunshine today and we welcomed large trees next to the trail so we could savor the shade. At one point we heard a bear calling but it appeared to be from the opposite direction. We came to a fork in the trail and couldn’t tell from the signage which way to go but fortunately we took the correct trail.
We came to another fork in the trail and Jeff sat down and said he was done. I could make out the edge of Spirit Lake and we could now see Mt St Helen’s. I walked another 50 yards up the trail and convinced Jeff it was worth the effort. We took a couple of pictures and then turned around and headed back to the car. It was just as hard hiking back to the car … how can a trail possibly be uphill both ways? We only saw about 4 other people on the trail. I don’t know if that was because it was the middle of the week or because it was a difficult trail.
We could spot a water fall on the face of St Helen and you could see that the dome has built back up. In Spirit Lake we could still see all the dead logs in the water. When we travelling to the trail head we passed a blow down zone which looked to have some really good regrowth …but you’d expect that, right? I mean it erupted in 1980! Wow, that is nearly 40 years ago! I guess maybe I should be more surprised that we could identify the blow down zone.
After our hike, we headed to the end of the road to a spot called Windy Ridge. From here we had a really good view of the crater and of Spirit Lake. On the other side of the road at a different view point we could see Mt St Helen, Mt Hood and Mt Adams, all at the same time. What was really scary was the road. It was 2 lane, no guard rail, and in a lot of places there were huge cracks in the asphalt on the God side of the road … you know, the OMG don’t look down side! It looked like the road could at any minute just break off. Thank goodness there wasn’t much traffic and we could drive on the wrong side of the road.
We left the Cascades behind and made our way to Kelso on I-5 to spend the night. The activity for tonight? Laundry! It just doesn’t get much more exciting then this.
From Kelso we headed west to the Pacific Ocean. We followed the Columbia River all the way to the ocean. Our first stop was at Cape Disappointment. It is called this because of an English Captain that was looking for the river’s entrance but didn’t go far enough south and named the location Cape Disappointment. But let me tell you, I think it is one of the most beautiful places on earth that I’ve been to. It is also the location where Lewis and Clark ended their cross county trek. There is an interactive center in the park devoted to L&C and it was very interesting and informative. We did a couple of short hikes, one to a beach and another to a lighthouse (at this point, after the previous two days I actually surprised I could walk at all, I was SORE!). There were actually people swimming in a protected cove. I don’t know how long it’s been since you’ve been in the Pacific Ocean in Washington … but it is COLD. So NOPE, not me!
We followed the coast up until we got to Grays Harbor, then went inland to Aberdeen and north from there to Humptulips. I kid you not, it’s a real town! From there we had to stay inland to go around the Quinault Indian Reservation which owns a lot of coast line. Then we headed back out to the coast and ended up at Forks where we spent two nights. If that sounds familiar it’s because Forks is famous for the Twilight books/movies. Along the way, we stopped to view the world’s largest Sitka Spruce (much more exciting then the world’s largest ball of twine, take my word for it!)
Forks was our staging spot to get us out to a couple of hikes to the beach at Flattery Rocks National Wildlife Refuge which is west of Forks. There were 3 different beaches here and we went to two of them. The first one we had to park and hike about two miles. Once we got to the beach we had to climb over huge trees, I’d call it drift wood but to me that means smaller pieces of wood. These were entire trees! Most were at least five feet in diameter. Once we climbed over the trees and were on the beach we found a bunch of people that had camped overnight on the beach. Now, this was a long hike from the parking lot especially if you have to carry everything in with you …. tent, food, beach towels, camp stove, water … more power to them … I’ll stick to my air conditioned hotel room, thank you very much. This was a beautiful sandy beach. The second beach we went to was covered in rocks with little sand and while it was still beautiful it was part of a reservation and the homes in town were dilapidated which took away from the natural beauty.
On our second day, we took a day trip out to Cape Flattery which is the northwestern most point of the continental United States. From here we could see Canada across the Stait of San Juan de Fuca. Highway 112 from Sekiu to Neah Bay was the windiest road I’ve ever been on but it was definitely worth the motion sickness. We had to hike out to the coast. I don’t remember how far but the path was really weird. In some areas it was an elevated wooden walkway which wasn’t really wide enough for two people to pass each other going different directions. There were quite a few people here so the viewing platforms over the cliffs were kind of crowded, but oh the views… they were impressive! We think we might have actually spotted a puffin but even with binoculars we couldn’t get a close enough view to verify.
Our last day was a travel day back to Seattle. We had kind of mapped out a route but ended up taking a ferry across Puget Sound which probably saved us an hour an a half. We spotted an Orca in the Sound which was kind of cool.
Once we start heading home we kind of shut down. We did stop at the Seattle pier but since we are both not big souvenir shoppers it was kind of a bust, plus there were a ton of people – far different from the rest of the week. We ended up heading to the hotel, finding a really cool place for dinner and calling it day. I know you’re probably not going to believe this, but I actually enjoyed Washington so much more than Alaska. This part of our trip was great.
Future plans …. headed to South America in March 2020. Stay tuned!