Last week Betty and I were supposed to hike and backpack a 20 mile loop in the Enchantments in Washington State. We were one weekend too late. We had been planning for this trip for months, even going so far as to apply and receive permits to hike through this amazing wonderland during the turning of the Birch trees. It wasn't meant to be this year I guess. We rallied though and decided to see what the Olympic National Forest was all about. Unfortunately, on this particular weekend, multiple fronts moved through the area, producing as much as 3 inches of rain in one day! We forged on though with full recognition of the fact that this might be our rainiest trip ever!
Luckily, we were able to use my Mom's place as a home base. From her house, we drove to Port Angeles and up to Hurricane Ridge. It was beautiful!
We also rented a wide angle camera lens for what we thought would be epic Enchantments photos. We made the best of it. I am kind of interested in photography and did a little dance after putting the lens on my camera. Betty caught me in action.
There was a good deal of cloud cover, but it was still stunning!
Even the drive down was even pretty.
We stayed in Port Angeles one night and decided to get some seafood for dinner. We also walked around this super charming little town and found what I think is the best magazine store ever! Wish I remembered the name, but if you look at the photo above, it is just to the right at the bottom of the stairs.
Camera fun downtown....
We headed East towards the coast the next day and had to stop and drool over Crescent Lake.
We took some photos and then continued on to Ozette Lake. The hike was about 3.5 miles and we were lucky the rain was light. It was also a different experience because we walked along a boardwalk type trail. The rain forest was so marshy that they had to construct the wooded walkway for when the rains came. We understood the utility of the trail the next day on our way out. But first, the hike in-
It felt like we were in some fairy tale walking through a green wonderland. At times it was so dark I felt like I was in a Bernstein Bears book. It was great!
We were happy.
We arrived at the beach to find a deer family walking around. It was foggy and the beach felt completely uninhabited(by humans that is). There was abundant bird life and ridiculous amounts of sea creatures and plant life viewable while the tide was out. Our timing was perfect.
Gorgeous and Peaceful!
A few of what seemed like millions of sea anemones!
A few other couples strolled in later that evening. There were cute little campsites and we chose the one that seemed to have the best protection from the elements. Turns out it really didn't matter all that much because at about 10 that night it started to rain hard and didn't stop for about 16 hours.
The next morning we had to shove ourselves outside to pack up camp. It got to a point where staying dry wasn't really possible. It was really wet.
We made it through about 3/4 of the hike out without a complete washout. Betty knew it was coming though and when we got there, all we could do was laugh. We walked in water up to our shins for about 5 minutes. It had been a long time since I had squishy toes!
On our drive home, we stopped and took more photos of the fall foliage and Crescent Lake.
It was still raining.
The picture above is Crescent Lake with the wide angle lens.
These were leaves on the lake bottom.
We stopped several times on our drive back to Mom's house taking random photos. It was a nice relaxing and wet trip! I look forward to seeing Olympic National Forest during the dry season!
While I was on my trip in Eastern Oregon, I brought back Blackberry Brandy for Betty. We all had a sip. It was delicious.
After hiking into the lake, we ditched our packs and kept climbing up to the top, South Fork Point I think it was called?? There were views of the three sisters, Helens, Hood, Adams, Broken Top, it was beautiful and the weather was perfect.
Yeah, I had a cramp after this little tricky poo.
