A trip planner to visit Olympic National Park, WA, USA

I visited Olympic National Park recently. Trying to plan for the visit, I searched the internet for some ideas on how to make the best out of a visit to this national park which covers a whole wide variety of landscape and vegetation. You might say www.justfuckingoogleit.com(Opens in new window). But it was not as easy as that. After my visit and spending 3 days and 2 nights there, I feel I have a plan, which might help the first timers to plan their trip.

The Olympic Peninsula lies towards the north-west of the nearest big city Seattle. The first place and the best place to enter the Olympic National Park is from Port Angeles. At Port Angeles is the Hurricane Ridge visitor's center, from where you could pick up the national park maps to help you drive around for the next 2 days. You invariably have to take the trails to enjoy the beauty of the Park. Hurricane ridge offers magnificent views to the snow clad mountains and some trails through the Alpine Meadows. There are also camping locations around Hurricane Ridge.

Pic 1. Hurricane Ridge Visitors Center
Plan to stay in Port Angeles the first night. Reserving accomodation in advance would be ideal. It could get really tough to find an accomodation especially during the long weekends, especially in summer. If you could do reservation well in advance to get a place to stay in the historic Crescent Lake Inn, that would be awesome.

Pic 2. Crescent Lake
You could visit places around Hurricane Ridge during the first day of your visit. Don't miss to stop by and drive around Crescent lake and take Marymere falls trail and Sol Duc river trail.

Pic 3. Sol Duc river falls
Continue on US-101 east to the Pacific Ocean beaches the second day and plan for a stay at Forks. If it's only 2 days and 1 night trip, skip the stay at Port Angeles/ Crescent Lake and plan for stay at Forks.

Ruby beach and Realto beach are must visit ocean beaches. Cape Flattery (Neah Bay), the most north westerly point in the contiguous 48 states of USA is another place of interest. There is a scenic viewpoint that overlooks the Pacific Ocean and Tatoosh Island.

Pic 4. Ruby Beach
Of all the varied vegetations that Olympic Peninsula offers, I found the Hoh Rainforest the most amazing. With an annual rainfall of over 150 inches, Hoh rainforest is the home to diverse vegetation including big trees like western red cedars, Douglas firs, Sitka spruce and bigleaf maples. The ferns, mosses and lichens, which cover the trees, the ground, and every other stable surface with a thick, almost fantasy-like growth makes us feel we are in a fairy tale world. Rain Forest - Olympic National Park

Pic 5. The hall of mosses
There are 3-4 beautiful trails in the Hoh Rainforest of which the "Hall of Mossess" is one which you should not miss. The Hoh Rainforest vistors center offers detailed information on all the trails.

There are more Ocean beaches to visit as you continue south on US-101.
I would suggest driving south on US-101 and then I-5 N to reach back to Seattle instead of going back through Port Angeles.