It was the morning after visiting Mount Saint Helens, and needless to say, it wasn’t a very wild and back-to-nature morning. We had camped at a KOA just outside the park in the town of Castle Rock, Washington. I am a big fan of Kampgrounds of America, but this one just didn’t have much to offer in terms of the great outdoors. It wasn’t very wooded, was rather crowded, and pavement spread throughout. However it did provide us a tent pad and shower, and that’s all we needed. 

After we packed up camp we headed to McDonalds for a quick McMuffin for breakfast- maybe not the best choice considering my deteriorating gut health at the time. I would have been fine with my nuts and berries for breakfast, but I had to keep Zach fed. About a half hour drive later we stopped at a Walmart. There I purchased glutamine and cherry juice, two things I thought would be good for my gut. So after KOA, McDonalds, and Walmart, we were back on our way to pursuing wild things and were on our two and a half hour drive to Olympic National Park.

Planning to visit this park took a long time. The park map is very intimidating. Although it’s all one peninsula, the road that goes around the peninsula swerves between National Park Boundary and private land frequently. The shoreline is mostly National Park but between the shoreline and the center of the peninsula is a lot of private land and inconsistent pockets of it. Sprawling from these private lands towards the center of the peninsula are roads that reach and dead-end like branches within the park boundary. Because the Olympic peninsula is a hodgepodge of land designations with many sprawling roads it was quite time consuming to figure out how to tackle it. It didn’t have one main park road like many National Parks nor did it have any outstanding features. There was no Old Faithful, Yosemite Falls, Mount LeConte, or Going-to-the-Sun Road. Instead there were dozens of “must-sees” depending on who you talked to. I was most excited to visit the rainforest, for it’d be a new terrain and biome for me. I also wanted to see the iconic shorelines with their large protruding rocks from the ocean. I just wasn’t sure which beach was “the one” for there were perhaps a dozen. 

When we reached Chehalis, Washington we were nearing the peninsula. There was essentially a “T” in the road. It was a right on highway 207 to Seattle and a left on highway 12 towards Olympic. If I was ever spontaneously presented with those options, I like to think my decision would be pretty obvious. 

Our first stop on the peninsula was on the Quinault Reservation at a fish hatchery. Driving along I noticed the sign which read,  “Quinault National Fish Hatchery Visitor Center.” It was the two words “visitor center” that grabbed my attention. I am a real sucker for visitor centers. It turned out to be a very small, unstaffed, one room exhibit. There was a dated film playing on an analog TV. Of course I watched it. I learned that this hatchery was a cooperation between the U.S. Department of Fish and Wildlife and the Quinault Reservation and hatches and releases about three million fish a year, mostly salmon. What I didn’t know is that we were free to explore the actual hatchery and “raceways.” This is standard policy at U.S. national fish hatcheries. I didn’t know, but it would have been interesting to see all the Pacific salmon in their different stages, especially since I like to eat them, and you can’t find salmon in the wild in Kentucky. 

Leaving the fish hatchery, we traveled further up the peninsula. It was very wooded and rather monotone in appearance. There was nothing of which to take particular note, and being so close to the ocean, the terrain was quite level. It was a bit of a mundane drive. I was getting very travel weary, although today I hadn’t driven that much. It was the collective mileage of the past few days adding up. Then I saw, peeking through the trees, the Pacific Ocean! It was so beautifully framed by the trees, and I could quickly catch a glimpse at the long sandy beach and the crashing waves.  Impulsively I quickly pulled into a small pull-out along the road. This beach was not on my day’s itinerary, but I wanted to stop and was excited that the pull off was just at the right moment, when the desire beset me. 

On the park map the beach is creatively labeled “Beach 2.” I parked the car and ran out onto the shore. I was glad to be out of the car and in a natural space. It felt very freeing. I had been released into the open after having been in the car driving through snuggly gathered forests.  The beach was very much like the beaches alongside the Redwoods. The gradient was low, the water shallow. When the waves weren’t crashing, the water spilled across the dark sand causing natural white foam. The big difference between here and the beaches of the Redwood was that here a flat thick pine forest stood right beside the beach’s edge instead of large green bluffs. Also littered close to the tree line was an enormous amount of driftwood, but not little odds and ends, but huge tree trunks and entire barren sun-bleached trees.  

After our brief visit to this beach I drove us a mile and a half up the road to Kalaloch Campground within the park boundary. Although the campground backs right up to the ocean, the only site I had scored online was one right after the entrance to the  campground. The ocean was not in sight. But after we quickly set up camp, I was excitedly-anxious to return to the ocean. On the itinerary we were supposed to go directly to the Hoh rainforest today, but realizing how close we were already to all these beaches, I decided it would be a beach day. We would visit the rainforest tomorrow. 

The next beach we visited was Ruby Beach. It was just seven miles up the road. Again, approaching the beach, the small path led to a beach perfectly framed by the trees. With this view I really felt like I had arrived somewhere. I’d seen this place before, and so I felt like I was somewhere famous. Although it does not have name recognition of many places in the National Parks, many people have seen this beach before on calendars, computer backgrounds, and the like. It is iconic in this sense with its tall rocks, not far out in the ocean, pointing upward like shark fins. These rocks were dark and contrasted against the white ocean foam, gray sand, and blue sky. A number of these ginormous rocks rested and stood on the sandy shore as well, apart from the water, at least for the moment. They look very epic, as if there should be great stories surrounding them: as if a pirate ship on a great voyage should go passing by; or a group of brave men on an grand odyssey finally reach the ocean after weeks of searching; or some mystic message in a bottle will wash up showing us how to find exquisite treasure. It’s exactly that kind of beach. Although the sky was blue, it was also misty and cool, adding a sense of chilling mystery.

I could not help but smile with the joy of being here, and we weren’t the only people enjoying this place. There were many others too. I wouldn’t call it crowded, but certainly not isolated either. Zach had bottled up energy and wanted to climb up the giant rocks with  maneuvers that made me nervous. I watched him for a few minutes, wondering, would he or could he really do that? Then I decided to just let him be. I didn’t need the stress of watching him risk his life. I took off my sweatshirt to make a little pillow and I laid down on the sand. I closed my eyes, took in the ocean air, and relaxed. I felt my body really needed to relax with my current deteriorating health. This would be good. When Zach found me after climbing around, we went on  to the next beach. 

It was about an hour drive with an exit from the park into the town of Forks. I started to see a few signs referencing the book and movie saga Twilight. I learned this was the home of Twilight, meaning the town in which the protagonist Bella is from. Although this is apparently directly referenced in the books, and the town’s welcome sign is shown in the movies, no other parts of the movies were filmed here. However, some of the townspeople are proud of their mention in the series and have really capitalized on it, housing the world’s largest collection of Twilight set props and costumes, and an annual Forever Twilight Festival. I also ran into a little general store and noted the extensive offering of Twilight nick-nacks and pattywhacks. I had not followed this series, but could not avoid its mention in Forks, Washington.  

When the road led back into the park, I made our final stop in the park for the day. We were at Rialto Beach and the highlight of the day! It was similar to Ruby Beach, with its large jutting rocks, and it was like Beach 2 in that it had a lot of enormous pieces of driftwood. It was different from the others in that no one else was here. It was ours, and Rialto Beach had two distinct features to offer. One is informally known as “Split Rock” The best way to describe it is like a giant arrow head was stuck in the ground, but then a bolt of lightning struck it and separated it perfectly in the center, creating two symmetrical pieces of rock, pointing towards the sky and just the slightest bit towards each other. It was another iconic vista. Something I knew I had seen in photos, before, and to now see it in person was indeed exhilarating. 

I had also done my research well for this trip, and I knew 1.7 miles up the beach was another iconic spot called “Hole-In-Wall, where the ocean carved out a hole in a rock about a story tall right at ocean level. Although it may be remembered as a hole in a giant rock out in the ocean, the rock actually is attached to the mainland. It is a peninsula, and I guess technically it can be considered a narrow rock arch. However, to the layman’s eye, and memory, it’s a hole in a rock in the ocean. What makes it particularly beautiful is that it is just at sea level and frames an ocean view perfectly.

It wasn’t enough to see if from the sand. I had to go out and walk through that hole. The place was only accessible by foot at low tide, I read. During high tide it’s straight up out in the ocean. Right now, we were somewhere between low tide and high tide, but where there’s a will there’s a way …or a concussion.  We abandoned the sand, and started carefully placing our feet around tide pools filled with all sorts of strange sea growing things, urchins and the like. Some were bright green, others were dark blood-stained red and growing tightly to the rocks, looking almost like some strangely colored sea moss. The sharp things concerned me. I didn’t want to misstep and have one impale my sole. Thus it was a challenge and fun game, I suppose. Eventually we were done with tide pools and moved onto rock jumping and scrambling in the ocean. I stood hunched, perched atop one rock I had just jumped to when a rogue ocean wave forcefully crashed against my rock spraying my face in bitter salt water- in a very Little Mermaid-esque moment. The assault caused my body to jolt in surprise. I wasn’t sure if this was a good idea at the time. I wasn’t sure if getting to Hole-In-Wall was achievable, but it was and was worth it. We took some photos and marveled at nature’s wonder. The hole in the rock in the ocean was now also, to us, an island of dark wet rocks serving as a window to the sea. The musings and observing all the fine details could have gone on, but we figured we better get on our way before the tide climbs any higher leaving us stranded on the Pacific Ocean.

Before we left the beach, we had to hike up to the top of the landmass that eventually juts out to provide Hole-In-Wall. Back on the sand, we brushed through some sea grass and shrubs, and found a very narrow informal path that led upward very steeply, making the whole body lean forward and made using the hands necessary at some moment. Alongside this path, the plant life was very jungle-like with long, large, lanky, sprawling ferns and other foreign plants to me. Atop the views were even better than from the Hole. From here we could see the shoreline spread and the large rock formation now below us. It fit all of the immense landscape into one view. 

On our walk back down the beach, I did not see any sea lions, as I was hoping for, but the sun was setting, adding slivers of silver and gold here and there, on a piece of driftwood of a certain wave. When we got back to the car we had to drive back through “Twilightville” and a quick stop for some styrofoam packaged burger and fries for Zach’s ravenous hunger. Back in the National Park, at our campsite, I noted in my journal that I was very tired of driving. I had seen some great things today, but it involved too much time in the car traveling from one place to another. I desired to be in one place and leave the card behind. That just wouldn’t be the case in this park. The car would have to take us from one place to another, but ahead of us were a lot of impressive things to yet see that would make it all worth it. There were epic vistas awaiting and first time wildlife encounters to be had! 

If you enjoyed reading this, check out my book “Still, Calm, and Quiet“

Check out my previous entry here: “My Personal Devastation: The horrific reality for me at Mount Saint Helens ”

Visit www.joshhodge.com