I will always have a special place in my heart for Mount Rainier National Park because, growing up, there was no better sign that it was going to be a great summer day than hearing the phrase “the mountain is out!” In Seattle, that’s code for “it’s going to be warm, sunny, and there will…
Tucked away at the northwest corner of an already remote peninsula, Shi Shi Beach (which is pronounced “shy shy”) is a gem of a beach in Olympic National Park. It’s wide and sandy. It has excellent tidepooling at low tide. And the combination of the remote location and two mile hike in mean that it’s…
Do you want the best possible endorsement of this trail? Normally, when we’re done with a backpacking trail, we say something along the lines of “that was gorgeous, but I’m not doing that again in the near future.” However, as we packed up our stuff into the car at the end of this hike, we…
Honestly, who doesn’t love a good alpine lake? We definitely do. Our favorite version of a summer day is a long climb to a crystal clear alpine lake, and Lake Angeles in Olympic National Park certainly scratches that itch for us. Hurricane Ridge, the alpine section of Olympic National Park, has many to choose from…
One of the reasons we love Olympic National Park is the breadth of different landscapes you’ll find within its (somewhat confusing and fragmented) boundaries. You have everything from rugged rocky beaches up and down the Pacific Coast, to dense coastal temperate rainforests with all of the ferns and moss you could possibly want, to crystal…
While we love our adopted home state of Oregon and places like Mount Rainier and Olympic National Park, if you ask us to name our favorite hiking destination in the Pacific Northwest (the west coast?), both of our minds go straight to North Cascades National Park (and the Mount Baker Wilderness, too). Why do we…