I got a pretty early start today. I thanked my gracious hosts and headed north along WA101. The highway follows along the banks of the Hood Canal for much of the two hour drive up to the Olympic National Park.
The Park has several very diverse ecosystems in it. The park is at the very center of the Olympic peninsula. This park is like many of the large arks I have visited recently in that there are very large distances between areas of interest in the park, and it is usually very difficult to get from one area to the other. Today I went to the visitors center and watched the movie about the park. It was very informative and entertaining. I then got my Passport stamp and talked to one of the information Rangers on duty. The Ranger suggested two area’s to check out and that is exactly what I did. The eastern portion of the park had a road that takes you from Sea level all the way up to 5250 feet above sea level. The road has many good viewpoint areas to stop and get pictures. Here are some that I took.
After driving through the Eastern portion of the park I headed in the opposite direction to check out a couple of lakes and the Marymere Falls.
The western portion of the park is very wet. It will get up to 180 inches of rain in a year! The section of the park that is on the other side of the mountains will get hardly any rain during the year. It stays very green due to all the snow that covers it in the winter and melts during the year.
That’s all for today. Tomorrow I’m heading to North Cascades National Park.
More tomorrow…………
Tom's National Park Adventure 
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