We continued our exploration of the Olympic Peninsula with a stop in Sequim. Sequim is in the Olympic rain shadow, and because of that, it is the driest place in western Washington. Ironically, it was gray and drizzly when we were there.

One day, we did the twelve mile round trip hike to the New Dungeness Lighthouse on the end of the spit. The spit was just wide enough for a beach on both sides and a little patch of grass in the middle. The beach was covered with pink and white seaweed that looked like bacon. There was also kelp washed up on the beaches that was hollow like a hose. We saw tons of sea lions swimming near the shore. When we got to the lighthouse, we went up to the top. Little Kid hiked the six miles to the lighthouse, but Ma and Pa carried him back in the Ergo.

On another day, we had a picnic at a park with a ton of ducks. As soon as we opened our lunches, we were surrounded by ducks. There were also weirdly huge ducks that we thought were a mix between Mallards and Canadian Geese.

Since we love animal festivals (we have been to the Bear Paw Festival in Alaska and the Puffin Festival in Newfoundland) we went to the Crab Festival in nearby Port Angeles. We ate french fries and corn on the cob, but no crab. We also listened to the music for awhile. It was very fun!

We stopped for a few days at Salt Creek Recreation Area near Port Angeles, WA. There were amazing tide pools that I had an awesome time exploring. I found anemones, huge mussels, and giant pieces of kelp. We saw many deer grazing in the campground, as well as some ferocious raccoons looking for food in our campsite.

One day we drove up into the Olympic Mountains to Hurricane Ridge. Even though we were only at about 5000 feet elevation, it looked like we were much higher. There were stunted trees and alpine meadows that normally are at much higher elevations. From Hurricane Ridge, we could see deep valleys and huge mountains with glaciers on top.

We had a great time at Sol Duc, a campground in the rain forest section of Olympic National Park. The trees were at least 200 feet tall! To look at the top of those trees, you had to tilt your head back…and back… and back … and back. While we were there, we met a guy named Lucky who taught me how to make survival bracelets. The day he taught me how to make the bracelets, I made two for my self, and taught two other kids how to make their own.

We also went on a short hike to a waterfall. There was a bridge over the river almost right on top of the waterfall. The waterfall plunged down a cliff into a crack in the earth.

We spent a week at the Kalaloch Campground in Olympic National Park, WA. There are three sections of Olympic National Park: coast, mountain and rainforest. Our campground was in the coast section, and there was a huge sandy beach backed  by high bluffs. On top of the bluffs there were big trees and lots of moss. The beach was covered with giant logs. We played a lot of Kadima, and explored the beach. We found six huge sand dollars!

While we were there, there was a full moon lunar eclipse. The moon was blood red. It was so amazing!

One day, we drove to the Hoh rainforest. There were huge trees draped with moss and covered with lichens. There were thousands of caves under the roots of the trees. We hiked thru the rain forest to the Hoh River, where we had a picnic lunch.

When we left Kalaloch, we stopped at Ruby Beach before driving to Sol Duc Campground. Ruby Beach was awesome! There were a lot of huge rocks called sea stacks everywhere.

One morning, Pa went to get an apple and found that the apples had been nibbled. We realized that we had a mouse in the RV! So, we drove 60 miles round trip to the town of Forks to get a no kill mouse trap. The next morning, we caught a mouse. We released the mouse miles away and thought there were no more mice… until we caught another mouse two days later. Hopefully there are no more mice in the RV…