August 16 – 22, 2026.
The start of our plan was hatched at a casino bar. We had spent a free night camping out in the parking lot and decided to show our appreciation for the stay by buying a few beers the next night.
Staying for free at the casino was actually our backup plan. Initially, we tried staying at a paid spot up on the mountain at Olympic National Park’s Heart O’the Hills campground. It was a Friday night, and we had stopped at the visitor center as soon as we arrived on the Olympic Peninsula. We asked a ranger about camping, and she told us that Heart O’the Hills had open spaces. After driving up the mountain and circling 3 or 4 of the campground’s cozy forested loops, we realized that she was misinformed.
Our bartender seemed to be in a bad mood or perhaps just had a surly disposition. When I asked for a sample of beer, she somehow opened the tap for only a millisecond. My sample was just a sliver.
Two stools down, an older woman who was either lonely for someone to talk to or might have had too much to drink kept trying to interject in our conversation. She wasn’t helpful, which was only mildly annoying to us. So we were surprised when two security guys appeared to escort her out.
With the lady gone, our surly bartender’s mood improved. She asked about our plans. We told her we were here to explore the peninsula and the many sites of Olympic National Park; we were just trying to figure out where to start.
The peninsula is about 3,600 square miles. Olympic National Park encompasses about 40% of it. But the park is not contiguous. Spread across the peninsula, it includes coastal sites, rainforests, and the vast wilderness of the Olympic Mountains. Roads branching off Highway 101, which circles the Olympic Mountains, lead to different parts of the park and other interesting areas of the peninsula.
So where to start? Go back up the mountain to hike in old-growth forest or head west towards the water?
Our bartender suggested that we visit the Olympic Game Farm. 40 minutes and 25 miles east, an area we already passed.
Back at the van, I got a text from a friend who recommended we visit the Dungeness Spit, just miles from the Olympic Game Farm. The coincidence had us heading east on 101 the next morning.
The Olympic Game Farm
The Olympic Game Farm started in the 1950s as a holding facility where Walt Disney movie animals were trained, housed, and cared for. As the use of animals in Disney movies declined, the farm shifted its focus from training to sanctuary. To be self-supporting, the farm opened its doors to the public in 1972.
A driving path winds through the farm where the animals mostly roam freely. We purchased a loaf of specially formulated bread to feed the animals. The staff was super nice, even when telling you to stop feeding the animals and to pay attention to their numerous instructions to keep you and the animals safe.
We spent about an hour driving through the farm. According to their website, they have over 200 animals on site. We saw bison, elk, bears, zebras, llamas, all types of deer, yaks, tigers, and emus.
Two important farm rules are no body parts outside the windows and don’t stop in the bison and elk fields. According to a handout we were given, “Damage may occur to your vehicle & others stuck behind you” if you stop.
Dungeness Spit
From the game farm, we drove over to the Dungeness Spit. The spit stretches out for 5-plus miles into the Strait of Juan de Fuca. Part of the Dungeness National Wildlife Refuge, it is the longest natural sand spit in the US. If you hike the full length of the refuge, you will find the Dungeness Lighthouse on its far tip. We didn’t make it to the lighthouse. But I did take a hazy picture from about 4 miles away.
Crescent Lake
Spruce Railroad Trail
The next day we visited our first national park site, Crescent Lake. We arrived early on the north side of the lake and hiked the paved Spruce Railroad Trail. It was the perfect place to start with light crowds and beautiful views of the water and the mountains on the other side. We hiked a couple of miles of the 4-mile trail before turning around, leaving us enough time to hike a few more trails on the other side of the lake.
Marymere Falls & Moments in Time Trail
Highway 101 runs along the south side of the lake. Maybe it was the time of day, the relative ease of getting to this side of the lake, or the variety of trails, but this stop was much busier. We hiked the Marymere Falls Trail and the Moments in Time Trail. Giant moss-covered old-growth trees loomed over us. Marymere Falls was a bit tricky to reach. At times, the trail was narrow and quite busy. The Moments in Time Trail was much less traveled and a bit confusing as to where it started and ended. Signs along the trail told the history of the lake.
Late that afternoon, we left Crescent Lake and the national park following Highway 101. We turned off the highway at Sappho, headed farther north and west, and camped right outside the Makah Indian Reservation.
Cape Flattery
The next day we drove onto the Makah Indian Reservation towards Cape Flattery. Cape Flattery is the most northwestern point in the contiguous United States. It is managed by the Makah tribe and requires a $20 annual parking permit. We got up early and bought ours at the Makah Mini Mart in Neah Bay on our way there, but they were also available at the trailhead parking lot entrance.
This 1.3 roundtrip trail was lovely. Wooden boardwalks were made of hand-cut planks and were well maintained. And the scenery once we arrived at the end was stunning.
Makah Cultural & Research Center Museum
After our hike, we headed back to Neah Bay to tour the Makah Cultural & Research Center Museum. The museum displays objects from the Ozette Archaeological Site, which was buried by a mudslide around 1560. A storm uncovered the site and 55,000 artifacts in 1969. In addition to artifacts, the museum contained full-scale replicas of a longhouse and canoes. Displays detailed daily life of how these people lived long before contact by Europeans.
Unfortunately, pictures are not allowed in the museum.
Ozette
Our next stop, Ozette, was back in the national park. It is less than 20 miles down the coast from Neah Bay, but we had to head back east about 15 miles along the northern coast of the peninsula. Then we turned south down a rural, mostly wooded road with no services for about 20 miles. The drive took us over an hour.
After spending the night at the national park campground at Ozette, we got up early the next morning to hike to the beach. We were surprised to see that the trail parking lot was already pretty full. We would later realize that backpack camping was popular here.
Two trails through the forest lead to the beach. One, the 3.3-mile Cape Alava Trail, veers slightly north, and the other, the 2.8-mile Sand Point Trail, veers south to the beach. If you want to make a loop, walking the two trails and the beach that connects them will take you 9 miles. We decided to do the Cape Alava Trail out and back.
I hate to say it, but the trail was long and incredibly boring. It was also not very well maintained. Like the Cape Flattery Trail, there were stretches of boardwalk made of hand-cut boards. But often, boards were missing, making it a long, perilous walk.
The beach was lovely. We arrived at low tide, so we did a bit of tidepooling. The giant sea stacks made the landscape visually interesting. We walked up the shore, found some rocks to climb on, and took selfies. My map showed the Ozette Archaeological Site as well as the Westernmost Point of Washington just north of us. But fog started rolling in and we ran out of steam before we made it that far. We had a long hike back so we turned around.
Hoh Rainforest
From Ozette, we returned the way we came back up to the peninsula’s northern coast. We then turned back south and eventually got back on Highway 101. Our next stop was the popular Hoh Rainforest. Back at the park visitor center, when we asked about camping at Heart O’the Hills, the ranger told us the parking lot at Hoh was small and filled up fast. This was no problem for us. Greg had a 9 am EST (6 am in Washington) call the morning of our visit, so as soon as it ended, he drove into the park with me still in bed. Once at the parking lot, we had our breakfast and then wandered over to the visitor center. A crowd was waiting for the doors to open at 9. We hung around for the ranger talk that started soon after.
The talk was excellent. Greg says it was the best ranger talk he has ever heard. We heard about scientists who have studied the rainforest and learned about things like nurse logs, where fallen, decaying trees serve as great places for seedlings to take root and grow into trees.
Then off we went to hike the Hall of Mosses Trail and part of the Spruce Nature Trail.
On our way out of the park later that afternoon, we saw a long line of cars waiting to get in. We were heading back to 101 towards the beach and a place to sleep for the night.
Kalaloch
The beaches of Kalaloch are right off the highway and the easiest sites to reach on our journey around the peninsula. We camped at one of the national park campgrounds and set out early the next morning to explore.
Throughout this adventure, I had been marveling at how different the forests were from other forests I had been in all over North America. The trees were huge, covered in moss, with exposed roots that snaked over the ground. I tried to imagine growing up with this idea of a forest in my mind. The beach was equally as confounding. There were no bright sandy beaches here. They were often foggy, chilly, and covered with rocks and logs. People didn’t come to the beach to sun themselves and swim. They built log forts and stacked rocks.
The Tree of Life
We started out exploring Kalaloch from the trail that leads from the campground registration parking lot. We wandered south down the beach to Kalaloch Creek, looking for the Tree of Life. We thought it might just be gone because our friends had told us it might be completely collapsed. But when we wandered back to where we entered the beach, we realized we had turned the wrong way. There it was, sagging into a crevice; it was still hanging on.
Kalaloch Beach 4
Multiple parking lots with beach access line Highway 101 in Kalaloch. After seeing the Tree of Life, we drove up to Ruby Beach. It was around lunchtime, and the parking lot was full. We tried Beach 6 Nature Trail. Full. Finally, we found a spot at Kalaloch Beach 4. To acces the beach here, you had to climb down some rocks. This was tricky due to me being old and wobbly and so many people wanting to come up while I was trying to descend. On our return, we used ropes to pull ourselves up the rocks.
After Kalaloch Beach 4, we jumped on 101 and followed it to our final destination in the park, the Quinault Rainforest.
The Quinault Rainforest
I didn’t know much about this location except that people said to go to Lake Quinault, and I had marked it on my map. We looked for camping in a couple of national forest campgrounds on the southeast side of the lake, but it was the weekend, and nothing was suitable for van camping. So I turned to the internet to figure out where to go. The national park bordered the north part of the lake, and there was a campground a 45-minute drive into the park. We ended up at a tiny campground a good distance from the lake but right next to a trailhead into the rainforest.
Irely Lake
The next morning we hiked the 2.3-mile (out-and-back) Irely Lake Trail. It was a bit disappointing because there was no water in the lake. I guess if we had done any research, we would have known this. I mentioned it to a couple of hikers we crossed paths with on our way back, and they didn’t seem surprised. But we did see some great wildlife. I kept seeing small animals cross the trail. At first I thought they were insects, but when I looked closer, I saw they were super tiny frogs. Called Pacific Chorus Frogs, or Pacific Tree Frogs, they were probably no more than an inch long! We also saw a Northern Red-legged Frog and a couple of Banana Slugs. The wildlife sightings definitely made up for the dry lake.
Kestner Homestea & Maple Glade Trail
From the Irely Lake trail we drove down to the Quinault Rain Forest Ranger Station. There we hiked to the Kestner Homestead and took our last walk in the park on the Maple Glade Trail.
We’ve seen a lot of the US but this is an area we’ve never explored. It looks just beautiful. Thanks for a great tour.
Steve
You certainly saw a lot on the Olympic Peninsula. It is big. There were a lot of animals at the Olympic Game Farm. The photo of the seal at the Dungeness Spit is impressive. However, you have a lot of great photos from the various places you visited.