We came, we saw, we Washington-ed

As we headed north out of the Portland area, we faced a bit of a debate - Rainier or Olympics first? Yeah, yeah, yeah - first world problems and such. But seriously - on the weekend of the eclipse facing sold out parks and forest campgrounds - how do you choose where you roll the dice?

We opted to head to Olympic National Park (NP). A word of warning - while the trees are huuuuuggggeee, bigly, and even big league, the campsites are not. Our 30-footer (small by fifth wheel standards) didn't fit most of the places we wanted to go. Our first audible was to stay near Lake Quinault in the southwestern corner of the park. Gorgeous lake, huge trees, a trail run through a rainforest - winning. We headed up the coast to check out the beaches (do yourself a favor and stop at Ruby Beach and climb amongst the driftwood and check out tide pools) before heading into the the Hoh Rainforest area. Have never seen anything like it. Huge trees ( like 9+ feet in diameter, yes, diameter you pi-r-squared folks) and all draped in mosses. Learned about nurse trees and clothespin roots while scoping out the trails. Side bonus - huge slugs!

We had another blowout on the way up the west side of the Olympic Peninsula. We'd strongly recommend against Goodyear Endurance trailer tires...but they've reworked the product (aka - killed that line) so there's that. That got us into the Crescent Lake and north side of the park area later than we wanted so we headed for a local state park (Dungeness Rec Area - yes they have crabs) which had space for us. They abut a Wildlife Refuge and we continued our “what the heck bird was that?!” ways. Morning of the eclipse, we headed up to the aptly named “switchback trail” to have some solitude...worked like a champ. Forgot to take a picture, but the eclipse shadows were super cool through the trees. Imagine a zillion little moon slivers in shadow as you walk under the canopy.

Recognizing we needed to restock (and plug the YOFOHome in), we headed to Joint Base Lewis McChord - great FamCamp and huge commissary and PX for re-stocking. Highlight was catching up with Nicole - great seeing folks who are just crushing life. Missed a few other folks as we were in and out chasing fun at Mount Rainier NP.

Mount Rainier is a beast of a mountain. There are lots of non-technical trails to get in and close and see glaciers and marmots (one of us might have completely geeked out over the yellow-bellied rodents of unusual size). Playing on the side slopes was fun (with stunning views) and we have had the benefit of slowly acclimating to climbing at altitude over the last few weeks so we weren't nearly as out of breath as some of the other hikers out there. Yay! In addition to the mountain rodents, we got an omnivore (actually two…) - black bear sighting times two! There's a fun small Forest Service Campground just outside the northeast corner - if you're in the area, consider basecamping at the Dalles Campground (note: not the Oregon Dalles version…).

Next adventure was to North Cascades NP. On the way, a large ungulate decided to become part of the story. Still feel bad about the black tailed deer that got his timing wrong, but he did not suffer more than that initial moment of “oooohhhh shiii...”. We escaped with a huge dent in one of the dually fenders. But luckily the YOFOtruck was drivable. We're pretty sure the folks that came out to investigate the loud bang ate roadkill stew that night. Fortunately, despite the delay we were able to get a spot in the NP Campground and had so much fun we extended a day - nice luxury since our solar panels had us fully operational the whole time even with the tree and smoke cover. We used the extra day to kayak in Diablo Lake - it’s really tough to describe the crazy colors of lakes fed by glacial streams. Glacial flour in the water reflects light and turns the blues to greenish hues. We'd need the bigger than 64-Crayon box (with the sharpener...duh!) in order to begin to color match. We've had cerulean as a color vote; Dean thinks if you use the prefix “alpine” then that'll suffice (i.e. “Alpine glacial blue”...this includes plants and critters too). How would you describe the lake color? Leave a comment and make a suggestion for colors based on the pics. And yes, made up words always count. We know you have the best words. Winner gets a no-expenses-paid trip to join us for a WOFO.

We listened to a ranger and drove the 15+ gravel miles (yea gawds) up to the trailhead to hike to Cascade Pass and the Sahale Arm spur. Rugged mountains in every direction, glacier and snowfield views, tons of pikas (yay rodents!), and some lingering wildflowers made it a great day of switchbacking. As a side note, we picked up some trekking poles between Rainier and North Cascades - if you like to walk in the woods - cannot recommend them enough. Almost like having handrails on the way up and makes the descents much kinder on the Army-abused knees. Caught a couple of Ranger programs in the evenings - both were great. One covered the reintroduction of the fisher (badass medium sized predator) and the other covered the influences and impacts of the glaciers on everything from the geography to the waters and the animals. Again, it's incredibly humbling getting snippets of how little we know about our environs.

From Washington, we headed back north into Canada. We had seen smoke from the fires burning in the greater Pacific Northwest ever since Crater Lake, but British Columbia was affected even worse. But more on that in the next blog post.