Family vacation part 5 - Olympic National Park

Monday we spent driving and hiking around the Olympic National Park on the Olympic Peninsula. It was definitely a beautiful place to visit, but hard because it is so big. You have to drive around the outside of the park to visit the different sites because there is a huge mountain range going through the middle of it - that was hard on the kids. We started out by visiting Hurricane Ridge in the Olympic Mountains and went on a short hike there. Then we drove back through Port Angeles and stopped for lunch. The next stop was the Hoh Rain Forest where we went on another hike and then we made a stop at a beach along the coast just before sunset. We hiked down to the shoreline and the kids climbed on the rocks there and played a little near the water.

We didn't see a single drop of rain while we were there so so much for being a rain forest and getting 140-170 inches of rain a year! It was hotter than I was expecting it to be and it took a lot longer to drive around the park than I thought it would.

The hikes were quite the production with our group of two families - our family of 5 kids and Shane's family of 4 kids - and all but Luke and Shane's newborn baby were girls. We got many looks from those around us and received several comments on there being so many girls. My favorite was when we were hiking through the rain forest and someone going the other way said, "It's a gaggle of girls!" The kids had a lot of fun hiking and playing together and I'm glad that Shane's family came along with us. We split up at the beach and went our separate ways at that point. Our family drove towards Seattle that night and Shane's went back to his parents' house.Baby K was very tired and didn't like being on her dad's back. Shortly after this picture we switched her to my front and she fell right asleep.My husband really wanted to stop here in Forks to get our picture taken by the sign... Talk about feeling like a complete tourist...If you click on the picture above and scroll to the bottom of it you can see Baby K on my back with her left thumb in her mouth and her right hand grabbing my ponytail. This was her preferred method of travel. She loves hair and whenever I pick her up she immediately puts her left thumb up to her mouth and then searches for my hair with her right hand to use as a security blanket - it drives me crazy!