Rest Days

After Darrington we realized we had climbed 19 of the previous 23 days, and figured a few days off would be nice. On previous trips through Washington we had always looked at Olympic National Park on the map, but being on a peninsula it's kind of not on the way to anywhere. We finally decided to check it out and spent a couple of days hiking through rain forests and along coastal beaches.

Of course we see a lot of forests and mountains through climbing, so we spent most of our time enjoying the beaches.

Knowing there were sea stacks along the shore, we even packed some climbing shoes and found some cool formations that actually provided some reasonable easy climbing (these were supposed to be rest days after all).

The beaches were littered with enormous dead trees, which provided some awesome root climbing and fun scrambling.

The tide pools were teeming with life, including anemones, crabs, starfish and mussels.

Kristal told me to go stand near the water for a picture and I just happened to be attached by this rogue wave when she took the picture.

I am always amazed at the beauty of the ocean and we had a fantastic couple of days sightseeing. We capped it off with a trip (only a little out of the way) to the Mount Baker Hot Spring. Just what our recovering muscles needed to cap off a few days of rest!