RHH's photos with the keyword: lake crescent

Lake Crescent is in Olympic National Park. The lake is twelve miles (20 km) long, 596 feet (182 m) deep and is west of Port Angeles on the northern end of the Olympic Peninsula. It is a great place for hiking and a favorite spot of ours for orchid hunting.

We've been away for several days. We've been staying with our son and daughter-in-law in the northwest corner of Washington and my wife and I took a few days to travel to Olympic National Park on Washington's Olympic Peninsula. We took the ferry across to the peninsula and then traveled to the far west part of the park before working back to the north part of the park. On our way west, this was our first stop, Lake Crescent. We drove up the east side of the lake looking for orchids and stopping for photos. From there we went on to the Hoh Rainforest (first inset), a temperate rainforest on the west side of the mountains, one of three rainforests on the west side of the Olympic Mountains, and the most easily accessible of the three. At the Hoh we hiked the Hoh River River trail to Mineral Creek Falls, an easy hike of six miles out and back. Finished hiking there we drove further south to Ruby Beach (second inset) on the Pacific Ocean and walked the beach there for another five or six miles. We had our supper there as well and watched the sunset from the beach before heading to the town of Forks. The next day we drove around to the north part of the park and first explored part of the Sol Duc area before going on to Hurricane Ridge. From Hurricane Ridge we drove to Obstruction Point by way of an eight mile rough road and hiked the Grand Valley loop by way of Lillian Ridge (third inset), a strenuous hike of eleven miles with four thousand feet of elevation loss and gain. We spent the night in Port Angeles and then drove up the Deer Park Road, another rough gravel road, this morning and hiked to the top of Blue Mountain, a short hike with spectacular views. After driving back down we caught the ferry in Port Townsend and are "home" once again at our son and daughter-in-law and will be here until Monday when we return to Spokane.