Sitting in the Hot Springs

Woke up to an overcast and drizzly morning and made a lazy morning of it.  Went across the street to a retaurant and enjoyed an excellent omelet for breakfast.  It was chilly enough that I enjoyed a cup of hot spiced apple cider from the motel office as we came back to our room.

We are staying in the small town of Forks (population 3, 500) which is on the western side of the peninsula.  It is an old lumbering town and there is a museum here about the timber industry.  It advertises that it gets more rain than anywhere else - 114 inches per year.  The woman here at the motel said that they don't measure the rain in inches but in feet.  It is primarily a tourist area now, with many motels and restaurants.  Forks is also the setting for the novel and movie of "Twilight" and there are tours to the many specific locations from "Twilight", as well as several souvenir stores with just "Twilight" items.

Downtown Forks from our motel

Spent most of the morning busily trying to make reservations for various things after we leave here at Forks.  We now have tickets for a fiddle festival concert on Saturday afternoon, motels for Saturday and Sunday nights, and a whale watching tour for Sunday morning.

Finally, when the drizzle stopped around noon, we got on the road to go visit another section of Olympic National Park.  The National Park takes up the entire middle of the peninsula but 95% of the park is only accessible by trails, not by roads.   We drove around to the north side of the peninsula and followed the Sol Duc River up a narrow valley.  We were again in tall pine forests with moss on the trunks and hanging from branches.  The river was full of rapids with the piles of downed trees along the sides.

Sol Duc River, with driftwood.

At the end of the road was the Sol Duc Hot Springs Resort where there were pools fed by nearby hot springs.  Luckily my bathing suit was in the back of the car and I enjoyed sitting in the mineral hot spring pool which was 103 - 104 degrees (while the air temperature was 65 degrees).  I had been wearing my sweat shirt as we had been coming up the Sol Duc valley and getting in and out of the car at various scenic views, but was quite comfortable in the hot springs.  While sitting in the pool I could look up at the tree covered mountains and up at a sky that was partly sunny with large patches of blue.

Soaking in the hot springs pool at Sol Duc Resort.

Driving back to Forks, the fog was coming in over the coastal mountains and it became heavily clouded over.

Spent some more time trying to plan for next week and starting the return trip eastward.  We will include a brief stop at Yellowstone and the Tetons on the return trip.