Growing up in the flatlands of the Midwest, I always wondered how people out West tell the difference between all those mountains and peaks.
There are so many mountain ranges and so many peaks with so many names to remember.
Fortunately, the Skyline Trail at Mount Rainier National Park had one of those helpful interpretive signs explaining all of the peaks that can be seen in the distance. One was my next stop.
Mount St. Helens wouldn’t be a national tourist destination if it hadn’t erupted in 1980. On a pre-eruption road map I found in a late relative’s basement, it’s just another peak among many.
Now, the area is part of a National Volcanic Monument that can be approached from the east, west, or south. Turns out, there’s no quick way to get there.
Since I was already at Mount Rainier, I first approached from the east. Even on Labor Day, few others had chosen to brave the bumpy and curvy forest roads (which are paved, at least) to get to the east side Monument overlooks.
White wisps appeared over the volcano as I pulled to the end of the road at Windy Ridge. Fortunately, a volunteer was on hand to explain that it was not a new eruption but just some dust blowing around. (A few days later, a unique cloud formation at Mount Rainier had people thinking a steam vent had opened there. It hadn’t.)
From the east, it’s easy to see where the volcano blew its top in 1980. A whole chunk of the mountain is simply gone. From an overlook of Spirit Lake, you can see pads of logs downed in the eruption, still floating there decades later.
I was only a toddler at the time of the eruption, so I don’t remember it happening. Displays at the Mount St. Helens Visitor’s Center, at the start of the west side road, explain that the volcano was sending clear signals of its impending eruption for months before it happened.
Though it’s only a few miles away by air, the drive from one side of the Monument to the other takes hours. I couldn’t get to two other interpretive centers along the west side road before they closed. Next time.
I was anxious to get to my next stop, Olympic National Park. It was the last park on my 20-week summer vacation and one of the most anticipated. I’d saved it until the end as I worked my way from south to north.
I’d heard a lot about Olympic and even had a souvenir pin from a late relative that I put on my hat for the trip.
Olympic is one of those parks that is mostly wilderness, with the highway near the ocean and a few dead-end roads to major attractions inside the park’s higher elevations.
My first night at Kalaloch Campground focused on the coast. I’d read that the beaches at Olympic were supposed to be more rugged than other parts of the coast, but Kalaloch Beach proved to be an exception, with a wide, sandy beach that had plenty of room even with hundreds of other people enjoying it at the same time.
Moving north, the next stop was the Hoh Rain Forest, which felt a lot like the wilderness of northeastern Minnesota. While both have dense forests, the Pacific Northwest has sword ferns, a lot more moss, and elk. Both places also have a lot of tourists but are still great to visit.
The journey from Hoh to Mora goes through Forks, which has been made famous by the Twilight series of novels and films (I am not the target demographic). I didn’t spot any vampires in Forks but did find an alcove at my Mora Campground site that offered great seclusion in the rain forest.
There are numerous beaches in the Mora area that proved to be more of the rugged sort, with plenty of visitors looking for finds on the beach.
One major attraction in the area is Cape Flattery, the northwestern-most point in the continental U.S. It’s on the Makah Reservation and not part of the national park. When I pulled over to check where to buy a Makah recreation permit, I noticed some push alerts that prompted me to tune into the BBC.
Death of Queen Elizabeth announced on BBC World Service, approximately 1732 GMT: pic.twitter.com/xgfilqHGYM
— NorthPine.com (@northpine) September 8, 2022
Being a news nerd, the radio was tuned to coverage of Queen Elizabeth’s death on CBC Radio One’s big AM signal from Vancouver between stops for the rest of the day.
One place where you can buy the aforementioned recreation pass is the Makah Museum, which is worth a stop on its own. The museum showcases cultural artifacts that were buried by a mudslide centuries ago and unearthed a half-century ago.
Cape Flattery is about a three-quarter mile hike from the trailhead parking lot. The views start to peek through the trees as the trail nears the end, with views of the wild rocky shoreline far below, and ends with a view of Tatoosh Island.
From here, it’s time to head east.
After setting up my last campsite of the summer at Fairholme Campground, I still had time to fit in a visit to Sol Duc Falls before sunset.
Like the rain forest, Sol Duc Falls reminded me a lot of northeastern Minnesota. Specifically, Cascade River, complete with fallen trees hanging over the waterfalls.
The next day, continuing east through the sizable community of Port Angeles, it felt like I’d already left the park as I drove past a dozen fast food restaurants, but there was one more stop.
Hurricane Ridge is the closest major attraction in the park to Seattle and was crowded, even on an early September weekday. I was a bit jealous of the kids who got to go there on a field trip (we had some good ones in the Twin Cities, but no national parks).
The mountain views are massive from the parking lot and get even more impressive on short (and crowded) trails from the visitor’s center.
And with that, it was time to head down the mountain and back to real life. It was surreal making my last stops at park overlooks (for this year) and posting the last pictures of my adventure to social media.
The day before leaving on this trip, I’d accepted a new job that would mark the end of my summer of adventure. I’m grateful for the opportunity but sad for the adventure to come to an end.
Days later, on my long drive home, I pulled into the Theodore Roosevelt National Park rest area just before sunset. The park greeted me with a dozen bison and a spectacular sunset. What a sendoff!
