An overdue update - photos from our last few weeks in Portland! We visited the Japanese garden for O-tsukimi (autumn moonviewing), printed new Christmas cards for our shop, ate at some of our favorite restaurants for the last time, visited the Pacific Ocean to say "til next time!", and packed and packed and packed.
To get to Hurricane Ridge, you drive from the town of Port Angeles into the mountains and go up and up and up until you've gone 17 miles and are suddenly on top of the world in the middle of the mountains. You can basically drive up there, take a photo, go to the gift shop, and leave, but we wanted to do something slightly more memorable, so we went on a hike! We wanted do it back in April, but we would have needed snowshoes to do it then (and apparently it can stay snowy through July!). Luckily, we didn't have those problems in early September, although it was pretty chilly when we started our hike in the morning!
The trail basically follows a ridge out to a high point, where you can get an even better view of the mountains than at the visitor center. For that reason, it's only 3 miles roundtrip but 950' in elevation gain - so basically straight up from the parking lot. Our hiking book warned us of crowds of tourists, so we started out as early as we could and didn't see many hikers on the way out. We did have plenty of views, though, and they were incredible! All along one side of the ridge were the huge Olympic mountains (including Mount Olympus itself). On the other side was the town of Port Angeles, the strait of Juan de Fuca, Vancouver Island, and mainland British Columbia. The picture below pretty accurately sums it up - - -
Not bad, huh?
Well, we huffed and puffed our way to the top (it wasn't that bad...and I blame the 6,000' elevation for any puffing!) and were rewarded with a panoramic view of everything all at once. We walked close enough to some deer to pet them - and heard the calls of the Olympic marmot! It was a little exciting, since before moving here, I didn't even know what a marmot was.
We had a snack at the top, noticed that the deer family had followed us up, stared at the mountains until we couldn't stare anymore, and headed back down. The throngs of people our book had warned us about were coming the other way - so we were happy we set out earlier! (See the tiny tiny dots of people on the left in the above picture? That's because we're so much higher than them, even though it looks flat!) It was a perfect hike and we were so happy we did it - we got to experience being in the mountains without being super knowledgable backpackers. Someday, we might try that, but for now it was nice to do something more accessible.
Here's one last photo, a panorama I put together in Photoshop - - - click on it to see it full size!
We decided earlier this summer that before we left to go back east, we needed to visit Olympic National Park again! It was so nice when we visited in the spring, and it has lots of things that we can only see out here - like huge mountains, elk, and the Pacific Ocean! Our second trip was a quicker trip - two nights instead of four - so we concentrated on one small corner of the park. When we visited in the spring, two of the places we wanted to visit weren't open yet for the year - Lake Crescent Lodge and Hurricane Ridge.
Lake Crescent is a big lake carved by glaciers that's so clear and blue, it reminded us of the Gulf of Mexico instead of the Pacific Northwest. The lodge was really cute, but we didn't stay for long since we wanted to do a hike along the lake. The trail we went on was called Spruce Railroad Trail - it followed the path of an old railroad that was once used for logging. Our hiking book rated it highly, and we'd never hiked on a trail along a lake before, so it was settled! It was a little bit confusing because the main trailhead was closed and the other trailhead wasn't completely clear, but after a bit of driving, we finally arrived!
The trail started out wide, flat, and paved but eventually became more of a real trail through the woods. The forest was really pretty and the lake was even better! We saw the lodge again, from way across the lake. We pretty much just marvelled at the perfect water the whole way. Luckily, there weren't too many obstacles in the path to watch out for! We only passed a few people the entire time and felt lucky that we had the whole thing to ourselves. Well, us and some deer - - -
This is one of the hikes we've wanted to do since we got our hiking book - part of the Pacific Crest trail, which goes from Mexico to Canada, and part of the Timberline Trail, which circles Mt. Hood. The part of the trail that we did starts at Timberline lodge and goes under ski lifts (still carrying skiers up to the slopes!) through alpine meadows to a lookout over a 700' canyon. Our book told us to go in August to see the wildflowers and we were skeptical (it's so late in the summer!) but the book was right, as always. There were tons of flowers everywhere!
After about a mile, we came to the Little Zigzag River and its tiny canyon - and a stream crossing! The landscape was constantly changing from meadows to forest to barren rocky hills. We didn't expect any shade on the trail at all, so we were happy to find ourselves walking through trees for some of the hike! We even had views of Mt. Jefferson, the second-tallest mountain in Oregon (second to the one we were on).
There were so many other hikers on this trail! It was probably the most heavily trafficked trail we've ever hiked - and we were a little surprised. We should have known, though, since late summer is the best time of year up here! There were lots of backpackers, solo and in groups, and hikers who looked like they were going all the way around the Timberline Trail (40 miles or so). Maybe someday! Another mile past the Little Zigzag River, we got to the regular ol' Zigzag River...and a slightly deeper canyon.
That tiny river all the way down there is actually pretty big! We sort of felt like we were on the moon, or in the desert, in these rocky slopes. We stopped and had a snack (and so did a bunch of other people) and headed back the way we came. We realized that the trail had seemed so nice and easy on the way out because it had been ever-so-slightly downhill the whole way. The way back was, unsurprisingly, just a bit more difficult. Luckily, we had Timberline lodge waiting for us - and delicious food!
We had drinks and a tasty cheese plate full of some of the best cheeses we've ever had - and they were all locally produced! After we'd regained some energy, we headed back down to the campground and drove home (thunderstorms forced us out a day early). All in all, a wonderful trip up to the Cascades!
