Bogachiel/Hoh/Rialto

Fire is back on the menu!! For now at least. But, we'll take it! Since there is no point to camping if you can't burn stuff, the boys were very relieved that they could sit around a campfire and try to dodge the smoke again after a year off. 

Our first camping trip of the summer brought us up the on the far side of the Olympic Peninsula to a campground between the beach and the rainforest. It was on a river (nice) and had a good amount of space (nice) but was also very close to the road (not nice) and there was some drama (not nice).

So, the drama. Actually, I need to back the story up because we had our own drama before we even left home. The check engine light came on in the van on Monday and I couldn't get it in until Wednesday, which was the day we were supposed to leave. Luckily, it wasn't a HUGE issue, but the day turned into a "hurry up and wait" situation where we all packed to go and then had to wait to hear from the mechanic. The delay meant we got on the road later than we wanted, but were still good to make it to the campsite and get set up before dark.

Back to the campground drama. When we arrived, the lights were out in the bathrooms. We didn't think much about that, because the lights did come back on. It turns out the power went out in that area and when the power came back on we had lights in the bathrooms but no water pump. No pump = no flushing toilets and no water at the campground. And while your typical vault toilet isn't the greatest bathroom experience you will ever have, an entire campground's worth of people using flushing toilets that don't flush is much, much worse.

Not a great start. It took the parks folks almost a whole day to get some portapotties on site and we ended up driving into Forks to stock up on water to drink. The ranger told us we could head home and get a refund, but we figured these were surmountable problems and we could still have campfires so the boys were still a go.

If you have even a passing familiarity with the Twilight series (or as I like to call them, The Guide on How NOT to Be in a Healthy Relationship), then the name Forks probably sounds familiar. While I was not able to convince Ben or Isaac that they needed any Twilight gear, we did take some pics to commemorate our experience in vampire/werewolf territory.

And by "we" I do not include Ben because he refused to have any photographic evidence of himself near all this craziness.

We spent our first day at the Hoh Rainforest. I think we stayed here on one of our first camping trips and Ben has been asking to go back for a while.

Since we went in July this time the rainforest did not look like a tinderbox the way it did when we came in August the first time.

There are some great trees here. 

Jason had just read a book about trees and how they communicate so he tried to listen in.

Isaac enjoyed finding all sorts of dead tree caves that could serve as potential homes for him.

Ben and I added an extra trail loop to get us down by the Hoh River. Luckily, he wasn't wearing the kind of footwear that would encourage him to go in the water since "I'm just going to check out the water temperature" typically translates into him wandering around in pants soaked to at least his knees. (Never fear, there are water adventures still to come!)

Our campground is right next to the Bogachiel River which turned out to be fairly shallow and a great place to play.

The real water, of course, is the Pacific Ocean. Friday morning we packed up and drove to Rialto Beach. Low tide was early afternoon and we'd heard about cool tide pools. Since I figured (correctly!) that parking would be a mess later when everyone else was fully awake and realized it wasn't going to rain, I insisted we get there early. This meant we had time to kill so it was time to play in the waves.

My kids are insane. Possibly certifiable. You can probably guess from this picture (hello grey clouds!) that it was not warm. It was not. And we live fairly far north so the water is NOT warm. Normal people stand on the beach and appreciate the wild ferocity that is the water, wind, and rocks of a Washington beach on a cold day.

My kids get soaked.

Ben did - miracle of miracles - have on a swimsuit instead of jeans. However, he was also wearing his hoodie which happened to be his only warm piece of clothing and it got soaked. At least he's predictable, right?

Our goal was to hike along the beach to make it to Hole in the Wall sometime around 2pm in order to see the tidepools but not get stranded out on the rocks. To keep Ben warm after he soaked his clothes while dancing with the waves, his very very kind mother let him borrow her jacket. Then we all made our way along the the sand to check out the rocks and the critters that make the coastline of the Pacific Northwest so interesting.

We were rewarded for our efforts with sea anemone and starfish.

A sandy walk back to the car and a 3+ hour drive and we were back home with our flushing toilets and showers. 

During our adventures on the peninsula, Josh and Michael were back home living their best teenage lives. Okay, that may be a slight exaggeration. But Michael came back from Germany/France on Monday with a "cold". He took a covid-19 test on the last day of our camping trip so we got the bad news on our drive home.

D'oh!