Hoh Rainforest – 2018 – Adventures with the Yells

For our anniversary, we usually go on a big trip for about a week.

This year was a bit different since we had Zach’s graduation for his Master’s Degree and his side of the family would be in town during our anniversary. Since this was the case, we took a smaller trip a couple of weeks before on Memorial Day weekend.

We chose to go camping in the Hoh Rainforest at Olympic National Park.

Our trip started out with a bit more setbacks than we originally anticipated. The traffic was worse than we expected, even though we left super early, we ended up having to drive back home because we forgot something. With the traffic, and the epic journey of first-come-first-serve campsite finding, our 4 hour drive turned into 7.

However, when we finally found a campsite it turned out to be perfect! We got pretty lucky with the site we did find and we were so thankful.

We ended up paying $20/night for a campsite in the Hoh Rainforest side of Olympic National Park. There was firewood for sale at the campsite so we were able to enjoy all the fun parts of a camp out.

We ate too many hot dogs, but we didn’t really mind. 🙂

The weather was perfect with cool mornings and warm afternoons. We even pulled the cover back on our tent to enjoy the Spring breezes and sunshine.

We had such beautiful weather, we were able to just use the netting.

One of the days at the park we went on the Hoh River Trail.

The entire trail is 32 miles long, but you can stop and turn around at any point. At the visitor center they have a map showing notable spots to see with the distance it takes to get there. We hiked out about 5 miles to get to a waterfall and turned around at that point.

On the way back we walked out to the river to get a closer look at the blue river water and the smooth river stones.

It was such a beautiful hike! We really enjoyed that there wasn’t much elevation gain or loss, so it was a very easy trail for anyone to enjoy.

The next day we drove out to Ruby Beach, about 30 minutes from our campsite.

We hadn’t visited Ruby Beach since our Honeymoon in 2015, so it was a joy to come back in a different stage of life.

The beach was at low tide, which made for some fun boulder hopping and tide pool exploring. This was my first time seeing a tide pool in person, and it was so cool! I really enjoyed this experience.