I try to take one or 2 hikes a day....balances all the driving I am doing. I drove down Hwy 101 past Lake Crescent (over 600 feet deep! and on a sunny day the water is emerald colored) and up to Sol Duc HotSprings and enjoyed a soak in the commercialized public pools...looked like modern swimming pools but the water was lovely. Then I took a hike to Sol Duc Falls which goes through a mini rainforest. Part of what makes Olympic National Park so unique is it contains 3 distinct ecosystems...glacier capped mountains, Pacific coastline and temperate rain forests. The real rainforests are further west on the Pacific, like the Ho Rainforest which I went to a few years ago..it gets 12 FEET of rain per year! But this one feels the same to me.
I can appreciate the many bridges and trails that the CCC built in the 1930's and 40's..if not I probably would not be seeing the sites I can enjoy today as they would be unaccessable to the average person. We can thank Teddy Roosevelt for that effort of employing gangs of unemployed men to build up our park system.
The falls were beautiful and mesmorizing! Now back to the Hotsprings for an evening soak!
I try to take one or 2 hikes a day....balances all the driving I am doing. I drove down Hwy 101 past Lake Crescent (over 600 feet deep! and on a sunny day the water is emerald colored) and up to Sol Duc HotSprings and enjoyed a soak in the commercialized public pools...looked like modern swimming pools but the water was lovely. Then I took a hike to Sol Duc Falls which goes through a mini rainforest. Part of what makes Olympic National Park so unique is it contains 3 distinct ecosystems...glacier capped mountains, Pacific coastline and temperate rain forests. The real rainforests are further west on the Pacific, like the Ho Rainforest which I went to a few years ago..it gets 12 FEET of rain per year! But this one feels the same to me.
I can appreciate the many bridges and trails that the CCC built in the 1930's and 40's..if not I probably would not be seeing the sites I can enjoy today as they would be unaccessable to the average person. We can thank Teddy Roosevelt for that effort of employing gangs of unemployed men to build up our park system. 
The falls were beautiful and mesmorizing! Now back to the Hotsprings for an evening soak!
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