Joshua Tree, Channel Islands and Olympic National Parks
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| The Famous Joshua Trees |
Day 1 Travel and Joshua Tree - 9/22/22
Somehow Rebe and I added ourselves to Yeli’s (Rebecca’s sister) California trip where they decided to go to Joshua Tree National Park and Channel Islands National Park. They had decided to make a weekend of it and Rebe and I of course decided to add a little more.
For some reason everyone wanted to get to Los Angeles as early as possible, I guess it makes sense to not waste a day but that then meant catching the 530am flight out of Houston and a 315am wake up. On our way out the door Rebe realized that she didn’t have her wallet, so we start checking the house and discover it’s not in the house and she didn’t leave the house on Wednesday so now we know she lost it on Tuesday. On Tuesday we stopped at REI to grab some more hiking gear and after calling them later on Thursday we confirmed she did leave it at the store. So… passport it was and to the airport we went.
Arrived in LA at 7, waited for Yeli and the rest of the friends to arrive and we stopped at Pann’s for breakfast. Apparently this joint was legit and I just found it close to the airport, it’s like a classic dinner type establishment. We all had breakfast and met up to plan the rest of the day.
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| Pann's Dinner for breakfast |
After breakfast we started to head to Joshua Tree, but then I had an epiphany that we should go to the La Brea Tar Pits and low and behold it was only 3 miles from our current location. With a quick detour we were at the La Brea Tar Pits, even found a spot with free parking (Aimel paid $20 lol).
La Brea was really cool, I thought this was a place where they had found fossils and that was the end of it, but they are still finding fossils in the pits and still cataloging. They had found SO MANY fossils it’s really crazy, all sorts of animals got trapped in the tar and just couldn’t get out.
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| Entrance to Museum |
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| Mastodon fossils |
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| Site where they are still finding fossils today |
We walked the site and visited the museum before we headed on over to Joshua Tree, which was another 2.5 hours from LA, had a quick chat with the rangers. We stopped at Walmart for supplies and then finally checked into our AirBNB, and the host had a crazy list of rules including not using the towels to wash your makeup off. They were adamant about that.
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| the abode |
After settling into the house, we went over to the Mora Oasis to check it out. There used to be an oasis there and there used to be a visitor’s center there, well the building is still there but they have shut down operations and move to a new location.
We then drove back towards the house and stopped at Indian Cove Nature Trail, which was very cool. Sort of reminded me of rock outcropping near Las Vegas or southern Utah.
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| Photo from Indian Cove Nature Trail |
Then it was back to the house for frozen pizza, because we like frozen pizza dammit and not much to eat in this tiny town ;-)
The Joshua Tree area is known for dark skies and around 10pm I convinced Rebe and Aimel to join me for a bit of astrophotography.
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| Stars and Planes over Joshua Tree |
Day 2 Joshua Tree - 9/23/22
Since it is September, it’s still 90+ degrees (32+C) in the deserts of southern California, we decided it would be a good idea to start off early and get the strenuous hike in first before the heat really sets in for the day. The crew was up around 6am and out the door at 645am with the plan to beat the crowd and the heat. The first never materialized but the second eventually did.
The first hike was to Willow Hole, this hike really has everything that Joshua Tree National Park has to offer. The hike starts with a nice stroll through some flatlands and Joshua Trees, this is where the first image in the blog is from.
The trail then moves into a large section of exposed rock before finally ending in a stand of willow trees.
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| Craggy rock formation |
When the hike was complete, we packed up our gear and headed over to hike Barker Dam. This is a nice section of exposed rock and leads to a man made dam that was used to hold water to feed cattle and horses. We also ran into a volunteer ranger who gave us a quick explanation on the geology of the park.
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| Rocks on Barker Dam Trail |
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| Manmade Barker Dam |
We then had lunch at Hidden Valley picnic area and after lunch we did the Hidden Valley hiking loop. The loop was small valley with a lot of pinion pines and surrounded by a large outcropping of rocks. We were almost done and then Yeli decided to face plant into a rock and later needed a few stitches.
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| Our shady lunch spot |
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| Hidden Valley |
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| Yeli lost a fight with the rock |
Yeli went to the ER, the rest of us hit the hot tub because well hot tub (actually cold tub because well desert). After Yeli returned we headed back into Joshua Tree National Park to catch the sunset at Cholla Gardens. It was a small field of the unique cholla cactus. Then it was over to 29 Palms (that’s the name of the city) for Mexican food for dinner and home to call it a day.
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| Cholla Gardens |
Day 3 Joshua Tree to Ventura - 9/24/22
Day 3 was moving day, and geez what a day it would be. Rebe and I like to make an effort to see as much of the parks as we can with the time we have. We convinced the others that we should make the hour drive through the park to see the Southern section before heading to our destination of Ventura.
While driving through the park we stopped at Skull Rock, which of course looks like a skull. We also stopped at Split Rock, which as you canny readers may have guessed has a big split. And finally we stopped at the Ocotillo Patch, ocotillo plants are a unique plant that grows in the deserts and is usually leafless but since it had rained recently it was green as could be.
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| Skull Rock |
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| Split Rock |
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| Ocotillo Patch |
From the park we made our way back across the Los Angeles area, or at least tried to make our way across town. This might have been the most painful drive of my life, getting stuck on “THE 210” was a nightmare of epic proportions. I typically don’t complain about Houston traffic and now I never will and this trip has sealed my fate of never EVER moving to Los Angeles. Even though we broke the drive up with a stop at In-N-Out it was still horrendous.
We got to the Channel Islands Visitor’s Center around 3:15, watched a movie about the islands, gabbed with the rangers, took in some fresh beach air, and got up close with some sea lions before settling into our hotels before dinner.
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| Rebe and the sea lions |
We made a plan for dinner at Finney’s Crafthouse, sadly they didn’t take reservations so we had to wait an hour which we killed by heading to the Ventura pier and grabbing a beer.
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| Ventura City Hall |
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| Beach at sunset |
Dinner was great with a flight of beer, then it was home to motel (cause Rebe and I didn’t want to put up for the luxury suite at the Marriott) in preparation for the boat ride out to the Channel Island(s) tomorrow.
Day 4 Channel Islands National Park - 9/25/22
Today was our day and only day to visit Channel Islands National Park, these are a series of islands just off the coast of California. The only way to get to the islands is to book a boat ride of some sort to take you across the channel and depending on the day it might be rough seas. Some days they they have to cancel the boat, which makes me wonder what happens if you camped over night, which is allowed, and they can’t come get you the next day… guess you better pack enough for your contingency plan.
After catching the 9am boat and arriving at 1030am, we got our quick orientation of the island and then headed off on our 8 mile hike. We started up the Smuggler’s Road, cut down through Scorpion Canyon, out to Potato Harbor then back to Scorpion Cove along the shore.
Definitely an interesting and beautiful park, next time I would love to get in the water and see what else the area has in store.
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| From Santa Cruz with Anacapa in the background |
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| Santa Cruz Coastline |
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| Santa Cruz Coastline |
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| Santa Cruz Coastline |
After the hike we said our goodbyes to Aimel, Ariel, Beth, Yeli and Terry and headed straight to the airport to catch our flight to Seattle to continue our journey as the others were heading back home. Nothing like landing at midnight after a long day.
Day 5 Seattle to Olympic National Park - 9/26/22
Since we didn’t get to our hotel until very late we decided that this day would be a slow start and just a slow overall day. When looking at a map, Seattle to Olympic NP looks close but you have to go around the Hood Canal or take the ferry across, either way it is 3 hours and that’s if you do not stop to snoop around. But if you’ve been reading these blogs, you know we tend to snoop around.
In my side quest to see all the state capitol buildings I had finally found an excuse to go see the Washington one but that was after we had breakfast in down town Olympia at New Moon Cooperative Cafe. I know the folks in Seattle are a bit weird but I think we had found the motherload in Olympia, don’t get me wrong they were the nicest people but geez. Weird hair, weird clothes at least they spoke normal and cooked amazing breakfast, 10/10 would visit again.
Anyway here’s the capitol.
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| Washington State Capitol |
Now we head towards the park, the 6th largest in the lower 48, the park is so large it would probably take weeks to see all the sections and one of the most popular sections, Hurricane Ridge, was closed due to road construction. Of course this road construction started 5 days before we got here and will not be complete for at least a month. It is what it is, so we’ll have to make plans to see the rest of the park. Olympic National Park is, well let me just copy/paste this wikipedia blurb as it will says it better than I can.
This park on the Olympic Peninsula includes a wide range of ecosystems from Pacific shoreline to temperate rainforests to the glaciated alpine peaks of the Olympic Mountains, the tallest of which is Mount Olympus. The Hoh and Quinault Rainforests are the wettest areas in the contiguous United States, with the Hoh receiving an average of almost 12 ft (3.7 m) of rain every year.[96][97] (WHS)[98] (BR)[99]
“List of National Parks of the United States.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 20 Sept. 2022, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_national_parks_of_the_United_States.
We stopped by the Staircase section of the park to have a quick hike since it was on the way past and we didn’t expect it to be too crowded since it’s not an extremely popular section of the park. We did a short 2 mile hike through the forest and then it looped back along side the North Fork of the Skokomish River.
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| Staircase Rapids area hike |
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| Staircase Rapids area hike |
We then got back on the road to travel another 2 hours up to the top of Olympic National Park only to stop at Walmart for supplies and to check into our little cabin on Lake Sutherland.
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| View from our rental cabin |
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| Cabin as seen from dock |
Day 6 Olympic National Park - Lake Crescent - 9/27/22
Now that we have a full day to plan what to do in the park, we had learned right before the trip that one of our options would be struck off the table. Of course this option is one of the most popular areas of the park, that would be the Hurricane Ridge area. This is the highland area of the park, the only part of the park that is actually in the mountains, everything else is around lakes, coastal or in the lowland rainforest. Guess this means we’ll have to come back at a later date to see this section. Regardless, we still needed to formulate a plan for the day and since we were staying in the Lake Crescent area we might as well keep it close and do some hikes in the area and save the driving for another day in the giant park.
We picked a hike up Mount Storm King, isn’t that a great name? This hike isn’t for the faint at heart, it’s only 2.2 miles up the mountain but the elevation gain was 2200’, steep is a bit of an understatement. As usual Rebe was worried about the elevation gain but I’ve seen her tackle 13 miles at 1500-1600’ gain so I knew she could do it. Not gonna lie, it was a slog to get to the top and after the million switch backs before you get to a section of ropes (not cable) that are just hanging from trees that you have to use to pull yourself up to the peak, but once you do you are rewarded with a beautiful over view of Lake Crescent.
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| Lake Crescent Panorama |
The easy part was now done, so now we had to come down… and it was steep and sometimes Rebe decides it’s just easier to slide down rather than hike down.
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| Rebe on the ropes |
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| Slide butt |
Once we made it all the way to the bottom, the trail also led to a small waterfall called Marymere.
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| Marymere Falls |
With all of that done, we were tired and ready to eat but the Lake Crescent Lodge Dining Room didn’t open til 5pm (it was 3pm) so we spent the next two hours soaking our tired feet in the very cold lake and walking around checking out the lake and some small trails near the lodge before dinner. When 5pm arrived we found out the an REI vacation group had reserved the entire dinning room somehow, so we had to eat out on the patio. This actually turned out to be a good thing.
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| Dinner at Lake Crescent |
We then hung around for sunset at the lake
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| Sunset at Lake Crescent Beach |
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| Sunset at Lake Crescent Beach |
Day 7 Olympic National Park Elwah/Sol Duc - 9/28/22
Day two of no Hurricane Ridge :-( but we would go on to fill the day with other cool things in the area. We started the day with a trek over to the Hurricane Ridge Visitor’s Center where I picked up a post card to add to my collection. I’ve been collecting them lately and I print out pictures from the trip and keep them in a nice album.
We started off the day with a quick stop at the Elwah area of the park where there is a nice little waterfall just off the road. The Elwah area recently had a dam removed and the salmon have started swimming back into the area to spawn, but since the dam is gone the area had a recent flood and the river washed out the road. You can still do the hikes in the is area, you just have to add an extra two miles or so.
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| Madison Falls |
Next we started our journey across the park over to the Sol Duc area, where there is a famous resort with pools fed by a hot spring. Of course we went in to the resort first to get a reservation for a 4 o’clock soak. We then drove further up the road to take a look at the Sol Duc falls, just a 1.6 mile trek to see this amazing waterfall.
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| Classic Sol Duc Falls photo |
We then head back up the road to catch a glimpse of the salmon jumping at the Salmon Cascade, we had stopped here originally and the salmon were just resting (I guess) but when we came back a few hours later, a few were trying their best to get upstream.
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| Salmon attempting to jump a cascade |
We also did a hike through the Ancient Groves, just a nice section of old Douglas Firs and Western Hemlock trees.
Then it was time for our 4pm soak in the hot spring pools, during Covid they started limiting people to 1.5 hours and I think they kept it this way to keep the crowds down in the pools. Definitely makes it more enjoyable in not being too crowded, I forgot to mention that if you get too hot in the hot spring pool you are more than welcome to go dip in the cold river water. I can attest, it is indeed VERY COLD.
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| 3 hot pools fed by the spring |
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| Cold Sol Duc river |
We also had dinner at the Sol Duc resort before heading home and calling it a night.
Day 7 Cape Flattery / Olympic National Park - La Push - 9/29/22
Before settling on the agenda for the day we toyed around a double beach day, but the following day was going to contain a visit to the beach. How many beaches can you see in a day and how different can they all be? While we were in the hot springs yesterday we struck up a conversation with a couple of guys who were in the States for a few weeks from the Netherlands and they had mentioned visiting Cape Flattery, the most northwest point of the continental US. Since we were in need of something to do besides a beach, maybe a visit to the cape would fit us nicely.
We checked out of our lakeside cabin and headed for the cape, the cape is actually on the Makah Reservation (Native American) and to visit the trails you have to get a pass for $20 but it’s good for the year. Hiking out to the cape was pretty calm, as usual in Olympic you will go through a lot of dense trees before emerging on the coast. No real beach at the cape but some good views.
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| Views from Cape Flattery |
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| Views from Cape Flattery |
It was after noon after visiting the cape, so we stopped in Neah Bay, still on the reservation, for lunch at Calvin’s Crab House, a local had built a restaurant on the front of their house and it is a must visit when visiting Neah Bay apparently. Rebe had halibut and fries and I had crab and fries.
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| Calvin's Crab House |
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| Halibut (left) and crab (right) |
While sitting outside enjoying the bay, some otters swam by and on the way to our next location we saw some seals on Seal Rock. The seals were only visible through binoculars so I’ll spare you the picture where the seal are just dots.
For the beach portion of they day, we thought about visiting the famous Shi Shi beach but it is a long hike, 2 miles, to the beach and then the beach is just as nice as some of the other beaches along the coast. And if we stayed at Shi Shi until sunset it would be a hike back in the dark and then an even longer drive to our place for the night. We decided on Second Beach in La Push, supposedly nice and the hike wasn’t too far from the parking lot. Take a look at the pics and you decide, it’s not Miami but it’s classic pacific northwest. Rebe decided to hunt for some critters in the tide pools and found a cool purple seastar.
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| Seastacks and rocks of Second Beach |
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| Seastacks and rocks of Second Beach |
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| Rebe's sole starfish |
After hiking back in the dark, yep still ended up hiking in the dark, we headed to our new location 20 miles south of Forks.
Day 8 / Olympic National Park - Hoh Rainforest/Ruby Beach - 9/30/22
Now that we had moved to the western-ish part of the park, we visited the Hoh Rainforest this morning. This area of the park is actually relatively small in comparison to some of the larger areas of the park, but this section of the park is actually very popular and during the summer wait time can be up to 2 hours. Not sure if it’s worth a 2 hour wait but it is definitely worth seeing.
The Hoh Rainforest is a part of the temperate rainforest section of Olympic National Park, this area of the park gets more than 100” of rain during the year. While we were there we did 2 of the 3 main hikes in Hoh, the first being the Hall of Mosses which is a short loop through the area of the preserved forest which is the oldest and has the largest trees and along with a lot of moss (hence the name) on them.
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| River growth in the Hall of Moss (HoM) |
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| Ferns and mossy trees in HoM |
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| Mossy Big Leaf Maples trees |
We then hiked the Spruce Nature Trail, which of course is dominated by a lot of mature Sitka Spruce trees. Not quite as interesting as the Hall of Mosses but still an interesting hike that swings out to the Hoh River and then back through the Spruces again.
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| Spruce Nature Trail |
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| Difficult to see that there is a large tree growing from the fallen tree |
We ate lunch at the Hoh campground which was really nice as it also was along the HoH river and really secluded back in the woods.
Once lunch was finished we moved on to the beach portion of the day, and that consisted of a visit to the Ruby Beach area. There’s Ruby Beach, in addition four other beaches which are south of the main attraction Ruby Beach. Down at Beach 4 there is an epic tree called the “Tree of Life” it is a suspended spruce tree (I think it’s a spruce) that hangs in between two mini cliffs. It really looks like something out of a movie.
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| Tree of Life |
Up near beach 3 there was a large cedar tree and a few others on the trail that we stopped to visit. This is the 2nd tree that the park has a sign for but it wasn’t quite alive. On one hand I’m mad that they have signs for these barely living/half dead trees but I was glad to see these monsters as they are truly amazing but also sad to see them at the end of their life.
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| Rebe under the big Cedar |
Finally we made it up to Ruby beach for sunset, but just as we rolled into the parking lot Mother Nature decided that the clear skies were done for the day and turned the fog machine on high. We strolled along the beach and scoped it out for tomorrow when we plan to come back for low tide. But I tried to take a few ‘moody’ pics.
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| Ruby Beach |
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| From a 'window' looking on the to beach |
Dinner was at a small brewpub (Westend Taproom Tip and Sip) in Forks, yeah that’s right Forks the city made famous from the Twilight books.
Day 9 / Olympic National Park - Ruby Beach/Beach 4/Quinault Area - 10/01/22
The final full day began again at the beach, this time with a target of seeing the low tide at the beach. At some of the beaches the tide gets low enough around the sea stacks that you can see a few animals that live in this borderline state. Low tide was due to hit the beach at 1020am so we made a plan to be there at 930 to get the most out of the low tide time. We started the day back out at Ruby beach since it was only 10 minutes from our ABnB, the beach had some slight fog and was very cool looking but the tide pools that we were able to access did not result in seeing a lot of wildlife.
With Ruby Beach exhausted we headed over to Beach 4 to check out the seastacks and tide pools, the previous day we didn’t actually walk down to Beach 4 as the tide was very high but since it was lower and the fog was cool looking we decided to go exploring.
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| High tide from the day before |
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| Low tide today |
While down at Beach 4 we, I should say Rebe and some rando lady from Utah found a bunch of starfish and of course there were more sea anemones than were countable.
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| Starfish |
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| 2 more starfish |
From Beach 4 we headed toward our final area of the trip, the Quinault Rain Forest area, we stopped at a ranger station on the north side of Lake Quinault to do a small trail (Maple Glade Trail) that probably rivaled the rainforest in Hoh. Even better was the trail came with a pamphlet to read along and learn more about what we were looking at.
Afterward we drove around Quinault Lake and around the loop road that circles the area, secretly hoping to see an elk since we hadn’t seen one yet. Along the loop there were two waterfalls and then we stopped at the World Record Sitka Spruce. An epically large tree.
With the events of the day mostly complete we pulled into the historic Quinault Lodge where we would be staying for the night. There were a few trails in the area but we just wanted to chill for the evening, so we sat around looking at the lake before having to-go dinner from the Salmon House Restaurant. After dinner we went on a hunt around the lake area for elk but once again came up empty handed, a real bummer since one of the reasons this park was even created was to save the elk.
Day 10 / Houston and Uber - October 2nd
Our original flight out of Seattle was at 2 or 4pm which would have given us some time to toot around Seattle but since you United hates us, they cancelled our flight and put us on the 12 noon flight. Which meant leaving our hotel at 6am just to get to the airport in enough time to check a bag.
On the second day of our trip, I had an epiphany that Rebe and I had made the ultimate error in booking this trip when flying in or through Houston. As some of you know Houston has two airports and of course usually if you fly out of one you would fly back into the same one. Every now and then you will hear about someone or even see someone at the airport trying to find a flight which is at the other airport. Well this time, we had flown Southwest out of Hobby Airport but flown back on United which always lands at Bush Intercontinental. If we had ubered to catch our 530am flight out of Hobby this would not have been an issue, but we made the grave error of parking at Hobby and thus had to figure out how to get from Bush back to Hobby to get our car. Yep, paid for parking AND the uber to get back to our car. WE DONE MESSED UP.
Until next time...
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| Sunset at Lake Quinault |
Another great trip, very nice, beautiful, cannot wait for your next adventure, stay safe thank you for the blog .
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