Saturday Summary - Week 31 - The Pacific Northwest Does Not Disappoint

May 30 – June 5

Federal Way, WA (60s) → Brinnon, WA (60s) → Olympic National Park (50s)

Where We Stayed

• Dash Point State Park — Federal Way, WA

• Dosewallips State Park — Brinnon, WA

• Kalaloch Campground — Olympic National Park, WA

  
  

Back on the Road

Returning from two weeks abroad and jumping right back into bus life is funny. Lovely, yes, but it took a while for my brain to catch up. I went almost immediately into trip-planning mode, because we had only mapped out as far as Olympic National Park and needed to work out the route to Glacier National Park by mid-July. That's how we operate, planning two to three weeks at a time, leaving enough space to be flexible based on our mood, what we hear along the way, a recommendation from a ranger, or a fellow camper.

There's more that goes into it than people might think. RV-safe roads. Cell service, not just at the campground but along the entire route, because Don often works while I drive. When he takes meetings, we look for libraries, which I genuinely love; they're a pulse check on the community, they have free WiFi, quiet spaces to work for hours, and more than a few have offered Don a private room for his calls while I work on the blog and trip planning. Distance is a big factor, too. On a workday, we try not to drive more than 3 hours total, ideally 1 hour before the workday starts, 1 at lunch, and 1 during the workday, if Don can get cell service on the road. Weekends can stretch to five hours, but never more, and we always try to find something worth stopping for along the way.

We've had anchor points on this trip from the beginning: friends and family, Habitat for Humanity, and key national parks. Death Valley was one. Glacier is the other one. And as I was sitting there planning our route to it, it hit me: this is the last anchor. We're in the latter part of the trip. I'm not ready. I'm really, truly not ready.

Dash Point & a Friendship That Picks Up Right Where It Left Off

Dash Point State Park in Federal Way was a wonderful place for a few days. Lucky and I walked the trails constantly; they're great trails, wooded and easy and good for thinking. Renee Sundburg, a friend from our time living in Nicaragua, drove out to meet us at the campground. It had been a long time, and yet we fell right back in, the way you do with certain people. We walked out to the beach and talked about everything: mundane things and heavy things, the kind of conversation that only happens with someone who actually knows you. It really is something how some relationships stay surface level no matter how much time you spend together, and others go deep even after years of distance.

Don and I also went on beach walks, took walks in the woods near the campsite, and went a couple of miles down the road to North 47 Brewing Company. The brewery was good, but honestly, the food truck outside stole the show. The burgers were beyond amazing. One of those unexpected finds that you talk about for days after.

The beach at Dash Point is actually Puget Sound, the second-largest estuary in the US, with a rich naval history. We'll be back on Puget Sound at our next stop, on the other side.

Dosewallips & the Hood Canal

On our way to Olympic, we stopped two nights at Dosewallips State Park in Brinnon, on the Hood Canal, which is also part of Puget Sound. So we got to experience both sides of it, which I loved.

The hiking here was beautiful. I was genuinely in awe of the trees. Don had just come from the Redwoods, so by his scale these weren't particularly large trees; but to me, they were massive. Little did I know that even bigger things were waiting for me at Olympic. We walked to the beach and then stopped at a local bar and restaurant for a couple of G&Ts and shared chili and fries. Not the healthiest dinner and honestly a bit pricey for what it was, a good reminder that not every restaurant stop is worth it. 

Dosewallips got me wondering about Washington state parks in general, because we'd seen so many of them on this stretch. Turns out New York actually has more, both in the number of parks and total acres. Which genuinely surprised me. And then I fell into a rabbit hole and learned that North Dakota has the most acres dedicated to state parks of any state, even more than Alaska, but only 13 parks total. They must be absolutely enormous. I'm filing that away. We need to experience that.

(For the curious: New York has 164 parks and 350,000 acres. Florida 158 parks and 800,000 acres. Washington 142 parks and 140,000 acres. California 139 parks and 1.6 million acres.)

Olympic National Park: Three Parks in One

Don took Monday off so we could give Olympic three full days, and I'm so glad we did. This park is unlike anything I've experienced, because it's three completely different worlds sharing the same boundary lines.

The alpine mountains. The temperate rainforest. The Pacific coast.

We gave each one a day.

Day 1: Alpine — Hurricane Ridge & Waterfalls

We left Brinnon early, stopping first at an espresso trailer that was literally a camping trailer converted into a coffee shop. Well caffeinated, we headed up to Hurricane Ridge for our first look at the alpine side of Olympic.

Victoria Overlook was spectacular, with sweeping panoramic views of the Olympic Mountains, the Strait of Juan de Fuca, and, on a clear day, parts of Victoria, British Columbia. I stopped to wave at Vancouver, where Luke (Henry's buddy) lives. A silly photo to send to Lisa, his mom, whom we visited earlier in the trip in West Palm Beach. The road keeps connecting things.

From there, we visited the Visitor's Center for our sticker and walking-stick medallions (and, of course, the stamp, we've been collecting those along the way), then headed to Madison Falls and Marymere Falls, both short hikes through beautiful forests. We stopped at Crescent Lake and genuinely wished the weather were cooperating enough for kayaking. It was in the 50s and raining (a real Washington weather day), but honestly, the woods in the rain have their own kind of beauty, and it didn't slow us down at all. The raincoats we've used this whole trip sparingly finally got serious use.

We ended the day at our campsite at Kalaloch Beach, right on the Pacific. Just sitting there at the edge of the ocean after months of desert and mountain driving was truly something.

We took a long walk on the beach and found the Tree of Life: a Sitka spruce clinging to an eroding cliff edge, roots exposed, still somehow standing. A living symbol of resilience. I learned that the ground beneath it continues to erode and its branches show signs of decline. I hope it holds on for a long time.

Day 2: Rainforest — Quinault

We considered two rainforest options: Hoh and Quinault. Hoh has become Instagram famous. For exactly that reason, I wasn't drawn to it. We chose Quinault, less visited, less photographed, more ours.

After talking to rangers, we knew we'd made the right call. Quinault is majestic. More moss and fern diversity than Selva Negra, which I never would have thought possible. The trees are enormous, you can barely see their tops. Selva Negra still wins best rainforest in my heart. This is my family's property in Nicaragua, and it is a true rainforest to me: wild variety of flora and fauna, layered and dense and alive in a way that feels untamed. Quinault felt almost... clean by comparison. More sunlight, immaculately maintained trails, incredible but not wild in the same way. Those aren't criticisms, just my personal observations.

The weather was much better on day two: 60s, no rain, and breaks of sunshine. So, we got on the water! We rented a canoe from the Quinault Lake Lodge, which sits on the ancestral homelands of the Quinault Indian Nation. The Nation owns the lakebed and surrounding waters, so renting from them felt right, a small but meaningful connection and a way to put money directly back. I wanted something different from our kayaks, so a canoe it was. It took some getting used to; it has a different motion and a different balance. Lucky, who of course came with us, was a little confused by the whole thing. The views from the water were just unreal. I keep having these moments on this trip where I think: I can't believe I'm really here doing this. A picnic lunch at the edge of the lake followed, giving us time to continue absorbing the lake's beauty. We closed the day by visiting the Big Cedar Tree. These trees are just insane. There's no other word for it.

Day 3: The Coast — Ruby Beach & Forks

Our campground at Kalaloch was right on the beach, and we'd been ending each evening with long walks on the Pacific. Lucky came with us most nights; it's a dog-friendly beach, and while she's not exactly a water dog, she doesn't mind it. She loves the kayak, she's fine getting her paws wet, she's just not excited by it the way she is by a good trail.

On our last full day, we visited Ruby Beach, highly recommended by George, a camper we met who is from Washington and camps at Olympic multiple times a year, always at the same campground. We follow local recommendations whenever we can, and George did not steer us wrong. Ruby Beach is extraordinary: dramatic rock formations, enormous sea stacks, and tide pools teeming with life. We left Lucky in the bus for this one so we could actually get in there and explore.

I tried not to get my feet wet. That lasted maybe twenty minutes. Eventually, I gave in because watching the surf roll in over the tide pools, with the green anemones moving with the waves, the starfish, the barnacles, and a dozen things I couldn't identify, was just too good to observe from a distance. I got wet. It was worth it.

On the way out, we stopped in Forks; yes, that Forks. The setting of the Twilight series, which I read with my nieces Kate and Rachel when they were young. It was fun to be there, to remember those books and the time I spent reading them alongside the girls. We grabbed some souvenirs and took some photos, and just like that, Olympic National Park was behind us. One of the best weeks of the trip. And that is saying something.

Next up: Skagit River and the North Cascades.