On the second day of our stay in Washington we made plans to drive out to the western edge of Olympic National Park to visit the Hoh Rain Forest. There has been a lot of construction at the park and with Covid still being a thing the area is only open on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays so this was our best time to go.
Prior to our trip I went online and made reservations for all of the different ferries we’d be using to get to the different islands and such. For the trip out to the Hoh Rain Forest we needed to catch a ferry at the southern tip of Fidalgo Island at Coupeville at around 7:30 am. To arrive on time we woke up at 5:30am and drove an hour to get to the ferry in time for our reservation.
When we arrived for the ferry we were told that the first ferry of the day didn’t show up so everyone who was supposed to be on that ferry would have priority for the next one if it showed up. Seeing as how we still had about 3 hours of driving at the other end of the ferry trip and we didn’t want to sit around for several hours hoping to get on, we decided to continue driving south on the island to Clinton hoping to catch a ferry there. The downside is that it’d require going out of the way and taking an additional ferry just to get to Port Townsend where the original ferry was supposed to take us.
Despite not having reservations for the two ferries we needed to take we were able to drive up and get on with no more than a 20 minute wait for each. The detour still took us about an hour out of the way, but at least we were on our way to the Hoh Rain Forest.
We finally arrived at the Hoh Rain Forest around 12:30pm. We expected to be greeted with rain, which we were, but it was a very light rain. We changed into our hiking boots and rain gear and then headed out on some of the trails for a bit of hiking.
The area was as impressive as we’d expected from photos we saw online before our trip, but the weather and crowds made it a bit challenging to take photos ourselves. We found a few spots, but most of the really photogenic areas were crowded with people or you had to traverse through some muddy areas that were blocked off.
We enjoyed walking through the different trails. We found quite a few mushrooms, but nothing that Rotchana could eat. She was really hoping to find edible mushrooms even though this time of year isn’t great for foraging. Coming from the desert area we’re used to seeing in Boise it was nice to see green everywhere, though. Rotchana even managed to survive all of the slugs that we found along the trail.
After a few hours of hiking we decided to hit the road and make our was back to Anacortes. The drive back was uneventful with the girls sleeping most of the way. Luckily, we didn’t run into any issues with the ferry on the way back home and made it to the hotel around 10:00pm. It was a long day, but we were glad we made the trip out to see the Hoh Rain Forest.
