Travels, Trails and Tales: PNW Road Trip Day 7: Mount Rainier to the Olympic Peninsula

This morning, the seventh day of our PNW road trip, we had to say good-bye to Mount Rainier. We were leaving to head over to the Olympic Peninsula on the coast. While I was sad to leave Mount Rainier and the Paradise Inn, I was also very much looking forward to visiting the rain forest and the many beautiful beaches a little further west. It was still snowing in the morning when we woke up. A good send off to Mount Rainier. After coffee and a little breakfast, we went to check out of the hotel and load up the car with all our stuff (and, when I say, all our stuff, I mean a LOT of stuff!), but I digress. Apparently it had been snowing pretty heavily most of the night because our car was covered in snow...not just a little snow...quite a lot of snow. After a lot of work (by my travel companion, thank you!) cleaning the windshields of snow, we got on the road. After a few hours of driving, we stopped for an early lunch in Olympia at Old School Pizza. My travel companion HAD to stop here for pizza since apparently the radio station he listens to raves about this place. Old School Pizza was definitely an interesting place...and it did have delicious pizza. Here are a couple of photos taken from my phone.

Yummmmm....mushrooms, onions and tomatoes!

Up next...finish our drive to the Olympic Peninsula, check into our hotel and then head out on a hike (since we'd been driving most of the day). We first came to the Olympic National Forest.

After turning inland towards Lake Quinault, we came upon our hotel, the Lake Quinault Lodge. Lake Quinault Lodge is supposedly in Olympic National Park (not Olympic National Forest), but we never did pass through a park entrance before coming to our hotel...so I don't know? What we came to learn about the Olympic Peninsula, is that it's not "just" a National Park per se, at least not in the same sense as Yellowstone or Yosemite is, rather, the boundaries sort of go in and out between the National Forest versus the National Park. I think the first time we actually entered the park was when we went to the Hoh Rain Forest. Some places you have to show your park entrance sticker for and other places you don't. It's not just one big National Park, if that makes any sense :). Anyway, here we were at our hotel.

Lake Quinault Lodge looking up from the lake.

Our home for the next two nights...the Boathouse at Lake Quinault Lodge.

Our view from the Boathouse. Nice!

After checking into the lodge, we headed out to hike the Quinault Loop Trail to Cascade Falls. We crossed the street from our hotel and started hiking. This is the hike where I painfully remembered (after having a similar experience on the Osa Peninsula of Costa Rica a few years back) that I NEEDED to have my hair either up or braided while in a rain forest! By the time we got back from this hike, my hair was one giant frizz ball underneath a beanie...all in all, not a good look for me. Too bad I don't have a picture..ha!

It was a rough angle to get a shot of these falls...so please excuse the not-so-great photos.

When we returned from the hike, we still had plenty of daylight left, so we got back in the car and drove the 31 mile Lake Quinault Loop Drive into the Quinault rain forest. We ran into this old truck that was parked in the rain forest. There was a sign in the window that read, "Rest in Piece." If you click on the photo, you can see a bigger version...not that anyone other than myself if reading this :). Apparently, there is currently a very big debate about land going on in this area (see the Wild Olympics Campaign).

Okay, so we did enter the park briefly during the Lake Quinault Loop drive, but it was late and the rangers weren't there.

We stopped at the Quinault Big Cedar :).

It actually turned into quite the hike....much more than we had anticipated...and it was getting rather dark in that forest!

There it was..the Big Cedar. Pretty impressive.

After the longer than expected hike to the Big Cedar (which was a beautiful hike, by the way), it was time to head back to our hotel for a little dinner and relaxing...little did I know what was in store for me (us) that night. It certainly appears peaceful enough.

I can't recall where we ate dinner that night, but I don't recall going hungry. Anyway, it was a lovely evening and a beautiful sunset over Lake Quinault. I remember coming back to our room and SO looking forward to completely relaxing (hey, I'm on vacation!) and enjoying the evening, when all of a sudden, there was a VERY loud aggressive constant barking coming from the room next door (paper thin walls!). Now, in all fairness, the Boathouse does allow dogs, and we knew this coming in, however, I had never heard anything quite like the frenetic barking that came out of the two little dogs in the room next door for 3 straight hours while the owners were away...probably enjoying a nice relaxing dinner. I thought I would lose my mind...seriously! I finally ended up taking a nice long hot shower where I could barely make out the barking, but, unfortunately, when I emerged, the barking was still there. I was just getting dressed to go up to the lobby to actually complain, when the owners returned and we never heard another peep out of those dogs. We did, however, hear someone say something to the owners outside as they were coming back, and the next evening, the dogs were not left alone...thankfully!