“We lean forward to the next crazy venture beneath the skies.”
This morning we said an unexpected goodbye to Brynn.
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After hugging her goodbye outside a lonely coffee shop in Port Angeles, we set out early morning at 8am for a drive further into the massive Olympic National Park, beginning with the scenic highways themselves:
Along the way we reached the town of Forks, which I guess is a big deal for fans of the series Twilight:
A few minutes more west from Forks and you’ll hit the Pacific Coast at Rialto Beach, unique for its landscape of sea stacks, geological formations & driftwood.
Then turning back we drove another hour inland towards the surreal dreamscapes of Hoh Rainforest, one of the largest temperate rainforests in the U.S. and a UNESCO World Heritage site.
From the visitor’s center you can take a quick 20 minute 0.8 mile hike looping along the Hall of Mosses Trail:
After the hike we headed back out of the forest for another hour’s drive south to the similarly picturesque Ruby Beach.
From Ruby Beach we began to get hungry, heading back inland past the Tree of Life and southeast to Lake Quinault for a late dunch:
Here you can find the world’s largest spruce tree:
After filling ourselves with guilty comfort food and store snacks, we continued onwards another hour’s drive into Aberdeen, the birthplace of Kurt Cobain. The house where he grew up still is up today:
Then to finish our day of sightseeing, we took one final detour to the enigmatic grounds of the Satsop Nuclear Power Plant, a worthy entry in the Atlas Obscura folkore.
One of the most ambitious nuclear power plant construction projects in the U.S. and built to withstand earthquakes, the firms behind Satsop Nuclear Power Plant soon ran out of money and construction immediately ceased despite being half complete with gargantuan cooling towers and reactor containment domes. It stands today as a campus to an eclectic mix of uses such as world-class acoustical lab to film sets to a training site used by the City of Seattle Fire Department.
We finally ended our day in Westport at Mariners Cove Inn, arriving by 9pm.
- At time of posting in Westport, WA, it was 19 °C - Humidity: 67% | Wind Speed: 13km/hr | Cloud Cover: cloidy