Hiking in the Hoh Rainforest in Olympic National Park

Back in April my family traveled to Washington state to visit my grandparents. February of 2020 was the last time we had been to see them so we were anxious to go back and visit! 

While we were there we wanted to do some hiking so we decided to head up to Olympic National Park. It was about a two hour drive up to Forks where we planned on eating lunch before heading out to the Hoh for our hike.

Once we arrived in Forks we made a stop at the grocery store for a couple of things, we ate lunch, stopped by the Forks sign so my sister could get a picture for her friends, and then we drove out to the Hoh rainforest. We were quite surprised upon arriving near the park at the long line to get in! There were so many people they had to do the one-car-out-one-car-in policy. We sat there for probably half an hour before getting into the park. While having to wait was a bit annoying it was nice that the park wasn't too crowded and we didn't have a problem finding a place to park. 

There are quite a few trails you can hike, the shortest of which just went kind of around the visitor center and was like a mile long. We wanted to do something longer so my sister had decided beforehand that we could do the Hoh river trail, which is just over 17 miles long. Obviously we wouldn't be hiking all of it but we thoguht we would just go as far as we felt like and we figured it would be less crowded and it certainly was. We only came across maybe 10 people. The majority of people seemed to be doing the very short trails.

I don't remember how many miles we ended up hiking. Maybe 3 or 4? We got a little bit later start to the day, lunch was a little longer than we had anticipated and then the wait to get into the park pushed us back a little time-wise, but it was still really nice to get out and go for a hike!

We were really lucky to get such nice weather. It's not often you get such beautiful weather on the Washington coast! And it was nice to get a little peek of Mount Olympus!

After our hike we stopped at a neat gift shop/outdoor store outside of the park where we were able to get a bunch of fun souvenirs, some cold drinks, national park t-shirts, and other random things.

Do you enjoy hiking? 

Hiking in Olympic National Park

While we were in Washington last month visiting my grandparents, we decided to drive up to Lake Cushman in Olympic National Park and go for a hike.

My mom had bought a National Park pass in August of last year, and we had planned on using it, but unfortunately we just didn't get around to it. We really wanted to visit some National Parks, so we made sure to use it twice during this trip! 

The drive from my grandparents house was a little over an hour and a half, and we didn't get started until after lunch, so we knew we weren't going to be able to go on too long of a hike.

We arrived about mid afternoon and it looked like most people had already left for the day. The weather was great, warm, but not too hot, and sunny.

The hike was really nice. It was a couple of miles and not too strenuous. There is just something so relaxing about being in the woods surrounded by peace and quiet!

Have you ever visited a National Park?