Dungeness Spit State Park is located on the north coast of the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State. The views (on clear days) is spectacular and can include views of Mt Baker in the North Cascades plus the northern Olympic Mountains. The Dungeness lighthouse is a 16 mile round trip hike … I’m not sure if they sit offer it, but there used to be an option to stay the night at the lighthouse (bring your own everything).
Dungeness Spit State Park is located just north of Sequim on the north coast of the Olympic Peninsula. The lighthouse at the end of the spit is an 8 mile walk (one way) … and the signage warns to make sure you are aware of the time and tides. At high tide you may be forced to work your way through a maze of driftwood, slowing your progress dramatically. If the weather is clear, the views can be spectacular … including looking towards Hurricane Ridge in Olympic National Park.
Another view from the top of Blue Mountain, this one looking west towards Hurricane Ridge and Mt Angeles (you can see the roadcut running from the right middle of the image across to the left skyline … Hurricane RIdge is just at that point. This is Olympic National Park. Mount Angeles (Port Angeles is at the bottom of the road) is between the two tallest groups of trees. Tree, Mountain, Tree is a pretty typical (and probably trite) photo motif that my friend and I joke about. But it still works.
This young buck was not shy, because it has lived its life in the National Park, where there isn’t any hunting allowed … so humans aren’t recognized as ‘the enemy’.
I was going through and organizing photos from the film days and found that there were a couple of photos that I had taken that could be combined into panoramas. This one was from a hike along Happy Lake Ridge in the Olympic National Park. The view is across the Elwha River valley over to Hurricane Ridge.
The Happy Lake Ridge trail is seldom hiked … even less since the Elwha Road washed out adding miles to access the trailhead. It is a nice loop trail, the upper end dropping down to Boulder Lake and then out through the Boulder Creek Trail and the (undeveloped) Olympic Hot Springs. With the wash out of the road, there are several miles of doubling back to get to the parking lot… but it is still mostly a loop.