Must Eat: Olympic National Park - Dungeness Crab, Salmon, Smores

Here are some of our favorite things, and places to eat, during our Olympic National Park vacation.  

Continued...

Family Travel: Olympic National Park Part 3: Kalaloch Beaches and Quinault Rainforest

** Update Jan 2018:  Hello there, and Happy New Year! I just realized I never completed my 3 part series/ summary of our June 2017 trip to Olympic national park.  I had part 3 in drafts, but am sharing now so that some of you might be able to reference it for your summer 2018 vacation planning!  I've created a label "ONP" to make it easier to search for all the related posts.

*Back in June 2017, we visited Olympic National Park as a family of 10 (2 grandparents in late 60's and children as young as 2).  All of the activities mentioned are suitable for a healthy, average fitness, family - though, we did carry the 2 year old at times.

Day 5: Ruby Beach & Beach 4

On day 5, we visited the coastal portion of Olympic National Park.  We live by the pacific coast in Southern California, so I wasn't sure what to expect but I was sure blown away with the beauty and bounty of the tide pools in the Pacific Northwest.  We visited Ruby Beach and Beach 4.  We checked the tide schedule and planned our visit to Ruby Beach around low tide.  To get to Ruby beach, you do need to climb over some large driftwood.  Our 4 year old enjoyed this quite a bit, and our 2 year old was comfortably carried by myself or daddy. We did not find the path to the beach difficult, but do recommend taking your time on the driftwood if you are elderly or with younger children.

Family Travel: Olympic National Park Part 1: Hurricane Ridge, Sol Duc Valley

*Activities in this post are suitable for healthy individuals from 2 years old to 70 years old.  We did backpack carry our 2 year old in a Tula carrier at times on the hikes.  We travelled from our rental home on Lake Sutherland. 

Day 2:  Exploring Lake Crescent & Hurricane Ridge, 

Our little hikers - Brian (2) and Alex (2) 

Cousins enjoying the Lake Pleasant area

We began our day with a hike to Marymere Falls, near Lake Crescent  This was a 1.8 mile out and back trail through the forest to a waterfall, which our family greatly enjoyed.  It is mostly flat,  except the final part where you climb some steep steps to view the waterfall. Our 2 year old walked most of the first half himself (0.8miles), and then we put him in the backpack carrier before climbing up the steps.  The other kids (4,5,10) and the grandparents had no problem hiking this. 

After our hike, we went to the Lake Crescent lodge where we enjoyed a nice lunch. The view from the restaurant was beautiful, though I did not get a picture of it :).  The service was a bit slow - but the kids were entertained with coloring pages and crayons. We enjoyed our fish and chips and salmon. 

Family Travel: En route to Olympic National Park: Strawberries, Lavender and Ice Cream in Sequim

PNW Summer 2017 Trip:  Day 1:  Strawberries, Lavender and Ice Cream in Sequim

In late June, we travelled as family of 10 to the Pacific Northwest, in order to visit Olympic National Park. Our group included 2 grandparents (healthy, in their late 60's), my family 2 boys - ages 2 and 4), and my brother's family (their kids -10 year old boy and 5 year old girl).  I planned this trip to include a combination of fun activities, suitable for all ages. We visited the Olympic Peninsula for 5 days, described in the next few posts. You can also find all of our ONP posts under the label "Travel-with Kids"

Since we were arriving from Arizona and California, our family met up at the Seattle Airport - SeaTac. After renting our cars (we booked through Costco), it was already around noon. We decided to grab a quick bite on the road and headed towards our first rental home in the Port Angeles area. For family travel, I like to find houses from airBNB, homeaway/ VBRO because there is more room for the kids, kitchen and laundry access -more on this in the next post.  

We took the route using the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, and stopped in Sequim (pronounced "Skwim") on our way, as it seemed like a charming place full of lavender fields and farms.  Since it took us about 3 hours to get there from the airport (with a short lunch & bathroom break), we didn't arrive until 3:40pm. This limited what we could do, since most of the farms close around 4 or 5pm. We were able to squeeze in strawberry picking, a lavender field and ice cream!

Our boys love U-pick, so our first stop was Graymarsh Farm U-Pick, where they happily (and quickly) picked strawberries until closing time 4pm.