Hey everyone it's Madalyn and this video is all about what to expect when visiting Olympic
National Park located on Washington's Olympic Peninsula. Olympic National Park has so much to
offer made up of several distinctly different ecosystems this park has the beautiful Olympic
Mountain range lush rainforest and 70 miles of coastline. The park is split up into several areas
and there is quite a bit of distance to travel when visiting, it's important to keep that in
mind when planning your trip and if you stick around until the end of the video we're going
to discuss our own trip to Olympic National Park. Things to do. Drive up Hurricane Ridge. Hurricane
Ridge is the best place to get incredible views of the Olympic Mountain range you can hike the trails
break for a picnic or stop into the visitor center be sure to keep your eyes peeled for wildlife
along the path such as deer and marmots experience the ho rainforest moss covered trees give off
a mystical feel in this unique treasure that will make you feel like you're in another world
take the hall of moss's trail into the forest and enjoy the peace and quiet that these tall lush
trees can offer plus more wildlife keep an eye out for the famous roosevelt elk ruby beach olympic
national park is also a marine park these rocky beaches look out over the sprawling pacific ocean
spend your afternoon walking the beach and be sure to take your camera and snap these iconic views
lake crescent lake crescent sits between the towns of forks and port angeles one of the most
scenic lakes in the entire united states plan on spending some time taking in this beauty
on a sunny day you'll be in awe of the beautiful deep blue water
how do i get there driving is a must at olympic national park
highway 101 is the main road that takes you around the entire olympic peninsula the park has several
different entrance points along this route it will take you a few hours to get from hurricane
ridge to the ho rain forest and then on to ruby beach it's possible to do it all in one day but be
sure to give yourself plenty of time for driving we'll discuss later in the video the logistics of
visiting olympic national park in just one day where should i stay in olympic national park
with its vast size considering where to stay when visiting olympic national park can be tricky
one option is the town of port angeles with a population of over 20 000 it is by far and away
the most populated area near olympic national park with a few chain hotels in the area
and more locally owned spots this would be a great starting point for exploring the park
we'll put a link to some of the top rated spots in the description below there are also a few locally
run motels in the town of forks which would give you better access to the whole rainforest
and beaches on the pacific ocean the area around olympic national park is dotted with campgrounds
in several rv parks do your research and pick one that is close to where you want to start
or end your day there are several lodging options offered by the national park service
inside olympic national park those include the kaleilock lodge located on pacific ocean the
lake crescent lodge and the seoul duck hot springs resort located deep within olympic national park
we'll put links to those locations in the description below as we mentioned at the start of
the video we're now going to discuss our own trip to olympic national park can you do a day trip to
olympic national park from seattle well the answer to that question is yes but if you're going to do
that prepare for a very very long day yeah so we actually didn't stay in seattle we stayed
a little bit closer but it was still at least an hour drive to the peninsula itself and then even
more um after that to get to the park entrance so i don't necessarily recommend that because
it it made for a very long day especially when we were driving back in the evening and it was
getting dark it would be a very long driving day just to get to the park and the park is also a lot
of driving so yes you can do it if you're there in the summer you can go up hurricane ridge drive
over the rainforest drive over to the beach but honestly i think you're looking at like 12 hours
driving in the car and rushing and rushing you're going to get up early and rushing from place to
place and we don't recommend that this park and this peninsula deserve more than one day so even
though we did it in one day yeah we learned that we wouldn't do that do it that way if we could do
it again we definitely would give ourselves two days and you know take a more leisure
stroll through the park than we were able to yep we absolutely would schedule more than one day
instead of staying in olympia we would have stayed closer to the park the night before so could have
gotten up and explored the park earlier what was your favorite activity in olympic national park
my personal favorite activity was the whole rainforest it was absolutely incredible it
was unlike any place i've ever been in the united states and i think it just really transports you
to an area i i can't even really find a comparable area in the united states it's just so unique
um i love the hall of mosses and i said this on our blog i'm not sure that the hall of moss has
picked up very well on video we tried um to get it but you know sometimes nature just doesn't always
film that well but it's a very cool place and it's a place that i wish everyone could experience
just once yeah it really is just an incredible place it there really isn't anything like it
but i really enjoyed hurricane ridge it was a beautiful view of the olympic mountain range in
certain spots you can see canada there's a beautiful meadow full of wildflowers
and uh we got to see a little bit of wildlife some deer and we got to see marmot i'd never seen
a marmot before and i thought that was like the coolest thing in the world we saw a mom and a baby
and i always love seeing wildlife in the parks so that's that's always going to win out in my book
what would you do next time you visit olympic national park for me it would be spending more
time at the beaches on the pacific ocean we had a little bit of a delay getting our day started
because of some downed trees in the road and one thing to know if you're visiting this park is that
at points in time there's just one road around the olympic peninsula so if you have any kind
of obstruction you're essentially at an impasse when we got to the oceans uh the beaches area
we got there about 15 minutes after the sun had set and there was this eerie gray
light which actually ended up being really cool i'll never forget when we walked up
because you could make out the scenery but there was no daylight um so we wish we'd gotten there a
little bit earlier so we could have experienced the sunset at the beach and got to see those
um in full color but uh next time we go i definitely want to spend more time in that area
yeah that all kind of goes back to us saying like you can do it in a day but everything has to go
right for you to see everything yeah and if you try to do it all in one day just be prepared to
feel like oh geez i didn't get to fully experience this one thing i wanted to do i definitely would
have liked again it all goes back to having more time because i would have liked to hike more in
the park we didn't really get to do that because we were rushing to the next spot rushing to the
next spot so i'd like to spend more time in the rainforest spend more time up in the mountains
and hurricane ridge and explore trails that are in that area as well so i definitely it all goes
back to we would spend more time that's what we would do if we went back to olympic national park
i agree if you found this video helpful make sure you give it a like and if you want to see more
from our day in olympic national park be sure to check out the vlog up on our channel now