2023 Cross Country Road Trip – Day 15

Day 15

Off to Olympic National Park!

This is a very large park so we’ll barely scratched the surface over two days. We’ll definitely come back. First, let’s start with a stop at one of the Visitors Centers.

Our next stop is at Lake Crescent. Such a serene lake for a little break. There’s a little paved viewing area along the shore. Look how beautiful!

Next, we drive over to the Western edge of the park to explore the Hoh Rain Forest, still inside Olympic National Park. This is one of the last temperate rainforests in the United States. There are several trails through the forest where you can walk among a canopy of moss and ferns. Really pre-historic looking. So neat!

If you plan to visit, make sure to read more about it on the National Park Service Hoh Rain Forest site to prepared properly.

Next, we go looking for the World Record holding Largest Spruce Tree! It’s along the southern edge of Olympic National Park. I don’t think that it’s technically inside National Park Service property lines, but if you look it up in Google Maps, you should be able to get directions to it. It’s not too far from the Hoh Rain Forest entrance, so we figured we might as well check it out while we were nearby.

Just note that you drive up to a little entrance that’s marked by a very small sign, so be alert, and then hike the rest of the way into it. There’s a small gravel lot where you can park. It’s a relatively short, level, trail into the woods. It wasn’t clear if we were even at the right place at first but after about a 5-10 minute walk, we found the tree with the sign. Phew!

OK, let’s get out of the forest and check out the glorious beaches along the Pacific Coast now! The drive along the coast is so beautiful! We stopped at several scenic viewpoints.

One of the scenic beach stops was to find the Tree of Life.

What makes this marvel of nature even more amazing is that this is a large Sitka Spruce tree, one of the largest species of spruce trees, like the largest one we saw above. This is not a thin, little front yard tree.

Over the years, a stream behind the tree eroded away the cliff along the beach that it grew on. So now, its whole root system is exposed and it looks like it’s just floating, only suspended by a few of its roots. It’s really amazing!

If you want to check this out, Google Maps can find it if you search for “Tree of Life beach” in Forks, Washington. After you park in the nearby beach lot, you do have to walk down a sand path to the beach and then scramble over the field of fallen tree trunks to get closer to it, but it’s not strenuous. Obviously, don’t get too close to avoid any damage to the tree or to yourself.

This is another one of those rare attractions you have to see if you’re going to be in this area. You don’t know how much longer it’ll be here before it succumbs to gravity.