Day 7, Grayland Beach State Park

                                                             

                                             Collecting rocks at Kalaloch Beach.

                                                          

Getting their Olympic National Park Junior Ranger badges.

 

Camp at Grayland Beach State Park.  Just a short walk to the beach!  The first picture is taken from the dune trail out of our site.  30 seconds to the sand, and 2 minutes to the surf!

Having fun!

Drove the truck out and on the beach.  The girls had a lot of fun and we flew the kite for a bit too.

   

Dinner!

Journal
Today started off by getting camp all picked up to move along on our journey.  After we were all loaded up we hiked down to the beach from camp to collect some flat rocks for some craft projects.  Once we left camp we stopped at the Kalaloch Lodge Visitor Center and the girls turned in the Junior Ranger books and took their ranger oath.  It was pretty exciting for them.
After a short drive, we set up camp at Grayland Beach State Park.  Our campsite is in the sand dunes within walking distance to the beach.  After lunch we drove out on the beach to play for a bit.   We splashed in the surf and dug a play area for the princesses.  Selena even made Princess soup!  I taught Grandma how to fly our kite and we had a fun time with that.  Then we came back to our site and the girls played outside for a long time.  After our yummy dinner of spaghetti and red potatoes, the girls got to have a bath and shower in our little tub.  Once they put on their “sleep masks” they were out.  Tomorrow we are headed to Westport and back to the beach.

Day 6 Hoh Rainforest and Twilight Country

    

Hoh Rainforest Visitor Center and Hall of Mosses trail.       

Hall of Mosses Trail

            

            

Spruce Nature Trail, did I just see fairy wings sparkle in the light??? :)

  

Twilight Country, Bella’s truck in Forks and sea stacks off La Push Beach.

     

Yummy fish lunch in Forks!

               

Walking along Ruby Beach.

 

Abby with Abbey Island, Ruby Beach.

     

Creatures we found along the beach, a ladybug and a slug!

Destruction Island and lighthouse from Ruby Beach.

While we were away from camp a submarine parked next to us!  Too bad it wasn’t yellow :).

     

Chicken Salad Crab pitas for dinner.

Journal Entry
Today we had a fun day.  First we went to the Hoh Rainforest Visitor Center and checked out the exhibits.  There were lots of displays teaching us about the different mosses, ferns, trees, and other plants as well as animals that live in this part of the park.  After picking out some postcards we went for a short .8 mile hike on the Hall of Mosses trail.  In the Maple Grove there were many kinds of mosses and it was pretty impressive to see how big al the trees grow.  We also got to see quite a few nurse logs (where after a tree falls down, it becomes the perfect habitat for small plants and even more trees to grow).  The girls loved posing for pictures at the bases of some of these huge trees.
After the Hall of Mosses we hiked the Spruce Nature trail.   This trail brought us alongside the Hoh River for part of the way.  This 1.2 mile loop took us through some very fairy like places.  We kept an eye out for little hideaways where they could live.  Abby thinks that these were perfect places for Silvermist, but I think all fairies would love it here.  We kept the girls hiking by “spotting” a flash of wings just ahead on the trail.  This worked surprisingly well!
Once we were done in the rainforest we went to Forks.  We stopped and collected some Twilight inspired handouts and had a delicious lunch of fish, shrimp, and clams.  THIS is the kind of fish lunch we were looking for!  The girls LOVED the clam strips.  Next we went to Rialto Beach, across the river from La Push.  This is a beautiful beach with tall sea stacks and a very rocky beach.
On our drive back  to camp, we stopped at Ruby Beach, where the sand is supposed to be tinged reddish pink, but we didn’t notice.  While here we walked along the beach, climbed through a sea arch, and hiked to Abbey Island.  The weather was absolutely perfect.  We could even see Destruction Island and the lighthouse in the distance.  The girls even found a ladybug on the beach.  They seem to find them everywhere we go.  We had yummy chicken salad crabs for dinner and a threat of going home on a bus (who knew this would make both of them cry?).  All is well and we will continue our adventure.

Day 5 Kalaloch and Sol Duc Falls

      

Scavenger hunt around camp and playing with the princesses.

      

Hike to Sol Duc Falls in Olympic National Park.

 

Camp at Kalaloch, what a beautiful site!  It is very large!

Oops!  Stepped in a mud hole!  Look at the little spot we found :).

 

Kalaloch Beach, we had the place to ourselves!  We didn’t build this sand castle, it was there when we got there.  It was beautiful!

 

Beautiful little girl!  Grandma and Selena flying the kite.

10:30pm                                                                                                                   July 9
We had another busy day today.  We started out by having a scavenger hunt at our Dungeness Recreation Area campsite.  The girls sure had fun finding leaves, pinecones, rocks and bark, and then decorating the table with them.  On our way through town we bought more postcards and mailed off the ones we had written.  We stopped at Lake Crescent because we wanted to hike to Mary mere Falls, but couldn’t find a parking place.  We decided to hike to Sol Duc Falls near the Sol Duc Hot Springs instead.  We had a very nice 1.6 mile hike to some beautiful waterfalls.  We saw many little places where it looked like fairies could live.  After the hike we drove to our new camp at Kalaloch.  we have a very neat site with woods and little trails all over.  After dinner, we hiked along the nature trail to the beach.  There was a neat fort built out of drift wood logs.  There was also a big sand castle built with stones and shells.  It gave us lots of ideas for when we build our own.  While we were on the beach, we flew the kite!  It was loads of fun.  After the beach, we went to the ranger program called “Mystery Island.”  We learned all kinds of neat things about the Olympic Peninsula or Olympus Island.  It is very similar to Havai’i :).  I’ll write more about that in the morning.  I’m tired!
11:54pm                                                                                                                        July 10
So much for writing this morning!  I’m also going to skip writing tonight.  I’ve made a list of what to cover in the morning (or afternoon).  We are breaking camp and heading south tomorrow.
According to the ranger talk the Olympic Peninsula is an island because it is completely surrounded by water.  The Pacific Ocean to the west, the Strait of Juan De Fuca to the north, Puget Sound to the east, and Chehalis River to the south, connecting to Black Lake which drains both to the Sound and to the Chehalis River.  Very interesting!!