After a nice breakfast at a local restaurant along US Hwy 101, and a couple of cell calls from our family and friends, Kathy and I headed up a 15 mile winding road in the north central part of the Olympic National Park. We traveled through a layer of clouds, saw blacktail deer, and saw a lot of visitors. As we broke through the cloud bank, we arrived at sunny and clear Hurricane Ridge. Wow! The views were drop dead gorgeous. My brother-and-law, Richard H, advised us not to miss this area of the park, and he was spot on.
On this ridge, atop one of the numerous lower mountains within the park, you get full view of the Olympics, including Mount Olympus, the highest at 7,980 ft.. Tectonic plates, riding up over one another, pushed up these medium height mountains 10 to 20 million years ago (so very young mountains indeed). The end of the winding road provided a visitor center, a few trails (all snow packed and impassable), and glorious views. We had lunch there, but it was hard to chew with our mouthes closed in front of such views. Trying to capture this in photos is difficult, but here are a few to take a look at.
As I am writing this post back at our camp, a couple of planes are outside doing loops and free falls as part of today's local celebrations. We will spend the evening of the fourth at our camp... enjoying a home cooked dinner and a bottle of wine.... or two. :-).. and listening to fireworks echo through the mountains here. Happy 4th everyone.
No comments:
Post a Comment