La Push to Toleak Point

There are plenty of beach hikes to do along the Washington coast. We opted for an easy two night trip as James was still healing from a shoulder injury and I'm carrying an extra load around.

The 'trail'

It wasn't always a flat beach walk, but the ups and downs were minimal.

Mule deer track

Deer fern fiddlehead
(sterile frond)

Deer fern fiddlehead
(fertile frond)

Sword fern fiddlehead - looking rather like an elephant trunk.

Swamp lantern (aka skunk cabbage)

Skunk cabbage leaf

Salal flowers

No shortage of dry firewood!

Awesome campsite #2

Vampires and Werewolves

While we were hiking around the Olympic Peninsula we were doing most of our food shopping in the town of Forks, Washington. If you are not a teenage girl, you may not know that Forks was the setting for the Vampire series "Twilight". The town seems to be making the most of this fact. There was a dedicated Twilight store and tour company (see Bella and Edward's houses!), in addition to Twilight paraphernalia in every single other store we entered.

Treaty line between the Vampires and Werewolves. Obviously.

This one was my favourite.

Port Angeles also had Twilight fever ("Eat at the restaurant where Bella and Edward had their first date!"), but luckily the town also had other forms of tourism - like tall ships and a folk fest.

Hoh River Rainforest

Moss

Wood Sorrel

Western Red-cedars

Roosevelt Elk

Beach Walk to Hole-in-the-Wall

After our rugged morning of poking things in tide pools we decided to go for a hard-core walk along a beach. With back packs and everything.

The sea is definitely encroaching on the Olympic Peninsula and this beach had lots of dead sitka spruce to attest to this.

One of the biggest pieces of driftwood I've ever seen. The beach was covered in them.

Tadpole enjoying some ocean and sun time.

Spiral kelp

Light playing on kelp.

Bald Eagle

Looking south

Elderberry flowers

Hole-in-the-Wall

Low Tide on the Olympic Peninsula

We headed west for two weeks of very mellow hiking and camping on the Olympic Peninsula. We got lucky and arrived the day before a very low, low tide. So we found a campground next to some tide pools and woke up 'early' (7am) do some nature nerding. Poking around in tide pools is always a good way to start a trip to the ocean.

This is the same island as above, only the next morning at low tide.

Barnacles, and a lone limpet.

A giant green anemone (Anthopleura xanthogrammica).

Another giant green anemone, looking a little droopy out of the water, but sporting some cool stripes.

A bloodstar (Henricia leviuscula).
Bright red, but apparently they don't actually have any blood and use filtered sea water instead.

Hairy chiton (Mopalia ciliata), looking more leathery than hairy to me.

Another blood star with some purple urchins (Srongylocentrotus purpuratus).

Orange sea cucumber (Cucumaria miniata) with with its feeding tentacles out.

And a lovely sun set right from our campsite.