Almost all my photos of Olympic National Park are of Tween Traveler climbing on things.
Olympic is an enormous park. It has alpine and rain forests, lakes, streams, mountains and beaches. All of these various environments offer a plethora of boulders, fallen tree trunks, enormous roots and piles of large driftwood to leap, scramble and climb around.
Needless to say, she really loved Olympic. And so did we. In four days, we managed to at least sample a little bit of everything this national park has to offer.
Here is my advice on exploring Olympic National Park’s diverse can’t-miss highlights and the best things to do with kids. I also tell you what disappointed us and what we definitely would have seen with a bit more time.
My Pick For a Port Angeles Hotel
Port Angeles is a popular base for exploring Olympic National Park and has a lot of small motels with rooms opening out onto the parking lot, which I avoid whenever I can.
For full-service hotels, I chose the Olympic Lodge and we enjoyed our stay.
The Lodge, located a five-minute drive from the center of town, offer a better value for the rate we paid than we have often found in national park towns.
It has a roomy, comfortable lobby with a fireplace and a large glass wall overlooking a golf course. It’s a good place to read or play games at night.
It also has a small patio with a rock garden and waterfall next to the golf course. But our long park days didn’t give us a chance to enjoy these.
The standard double-queen room had ample space for the three of us. Breakfast wasn’t included with our stay but there is a restaurant if you don’t want to hunt for breakfast in town.
We really liked the good-sized outdoor pool, which was well heated, and the hot tub. But they close the pool to families at 9:00 pm to give adults a kid-free hour in the water. A staff member actually came out at 9:00 to remind families to leave, even when there weren’t any adults looking to use the pool.
Given that we usually didn’t get back from our day in the park and dinner until nearly 8:00, this definitely cut our pool time short.
Read More:
• We also visited Portland, Oregon, Seattle and Whistler, BC on this Pacific Northwest road trip.
• Here’s my list of 13 Accessible National Parks for the Whole Family
• From Olympic’s coast, it’s easy to continue south down Oregon’s coastal road, too.
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Have Fun & Explore Olympic National Park With Kids:
My Complete Guide
Things To Do
Take In the View From Hurricane Ridge
Hurricane Ridge is often a first stop for visitors to Olympic National Park. You can drive to the peak and have great views of the surrounding mountain range.
The deep grass near the visitors’ center is a great place to spot the park’s marmots, who are very photogenic if you can catch one.
There are quite a few hikes that begin here, including some six-to-eight-mile trails down into the valleys below. But there are plenty of easier ones, too.
Families traveling with toddlers, strollers, less-mobile grandparents or relatives in wheelchairs can walk along the Cirque Rim and Big Meadow, which are three-quarters of a mile combined (one way). They’re paved and fairly flat.
We did the popular High Ridge to Sunrise Point hike, which is very doable with school-age kids or older and offers some really stellar views.
High Ridge is a half-mile loop that follows a ridge for part of the way and definitely has some uphill.
If you take the Sunrise Point spur off of the loop, which I recommend, you’ll do some more serious uphill walking, but for only one-tenth of a mile. The vistas are worth the effort.
Pick up free Junior Ranger workbooks for your kids on your way into the park or at the ranger station here (or try the souvenir shop; they often have them on hand).
Tip: You’ll have to do a ranger program to complete the book and for your child to get their junior ranger badge. Hurricane Ridge is a good place to find kid-friendly ranger activities.
We heard a 20-minute talk about the park’s endemic animals. It also touched on the park’s flora, fauna and geology. We learned the surrounding mountain range is isolated from other nearby ranges and this has a role in determining what animals and plants you will and won’t see.
The rangers know their stuff and are very good at engaging kids so it was a fun talk, not an academic lecture by any means.
3 Fun, Kid, Friendly Hikes in Olympic National Park
1. In addition to Olympic’s main attractions, we found plenty of shorter hikes that are fun for big kids and tweens and manageable with even smaller kids.
One of these, the first walk we took in the park, was a 1.8-mile hike through nice old-growth forest to Marymere Falls.
It took us nearly two hours to do this easy trail because it offered lots of large fallen trees for Tween Traveler to climb, hollowed trunks for her to step into and a few streams to wade in. All the climbing and wading and the look of the old gnarled tree roots made it one of her favorite walks on this trip.
The trail is fairly flat until you cross a small bridge, then there’s a short steep walk up to the falls. And a steep walk down again.
When we got to the waterfall, it was one of those long skinny ones; probably more robust in the early summer. But it was almost beside the point because of all the other neat features on the hike.
Tip: Even though they are technically different kinds of forest, Marymere’s old-growth woods look a lot like the Hoh rain forest. This is a good hike to do if you can’t get to that side of the park.
2. Before our dip in the park’s hot springs, we took a walk to Sol Duc Falls, another popular and fairly easy hike. The trail is rugged with a lot of rocks and roots to trip on, but the inclines are slight.
The falls are picturesque and there are some benches and logs to sit on, which makes it a scenic place to stop for a snack or picnic. If you’re in the park in the autumn, look for salmon in the waterfall as you’re crossing the bridge to the far side of the falls.
3. On the way to the Sol Duc area, stop at the Salmon Viewing Station. It takes you down to the Hoh river, where the water is so crystal clear you would almost certainly be able to spot the salmon if you were there during spawning season.
(Spawning season starts about Mid-October and over the fall months you can see some five types of salmon swimming upstream to lay eggs, too.)
Tween Traveler bypassed the viewing platform to scramble down to and all over the big rocks in the river. She declared this climbing experience “amazing.”
It’s possible to wade or take a dip when the waters are low and calm, and we saw people doing it, but the water is pretty bracing and I honestly don’t know if it’s actually allowed.
Swim in the Olympic Hot Springs
Every guidebook and travel on Olympic strongly recommended going to the Sol-Duc natural hot springs, but none of them had photos of the springs or or any description of what they were like, so we didn’t know what to expect.
After visiting them, I have to think it’s because none of these writers actually visited the Sol-Duc springs. It was somewhat unique and enjoyable, but not a must-do experience.
There are 3 warm mineral baths and a freshwater pool. The pool is huge, cold and quite refreshing after a day’s hiking. Tween Traveler preferred it to the mineral pools and I imagine a lot of kids do because none of them had any problem jumping in.
The mineral baths include a shallow wading pool, a large pool with a fountain, and a medium-sized soaking pool.
These mineral baths don’t bubble like a hot tub, which makes you feel a bit like you’re sitting in a communal bath. They also smell heavily of sulphur (and your bathing suit will too, until you’ve washed it a few times).
The warm water felt good and the sulfur probably did ease leg muscles that were sore from hiking. But it was a little odd.
The pools are open until 9:00 pm in the summer. I recommend coming to use them after 7:00 pm, when it’s less busy and you pay a reduced fee. If you can’t do that, make a plan to spend a morning here.
Avoid late afternoons when families staying at the Sol-Duc cabins go for a pre-dinner swim and park visitors drop by for their post-hiking soak.
Despite it being prime time (or maybe because of it), from 4:00 to 7:00 they close each of the warm pools for an hour in turn. Pay attention to which one closes when. We didn’t and missed our chance to use the fountain pool, which was the best one. Also, when that one is closed, the soaking pool is very full.
Entry fees include a locker and are waived for kids under three. The locker rooms are fine; they even have machines to dry your bathing suit. But they are busy. Pack flip-flops and bring your own towel.
Explore the National Park’s Beaches
Olympic National Park’s coastal areas are really cool and unique as beaches go, and really, really great for kids. Despite being all the way to the west, they’re closer to Port Angeles than the Hoh Visitors’ Center. The closest one is an hour away and the furthest is 90 minutes.
1. We ended our day at Second Beach, which was probably the most interesting experience of the trip.
From the parking area, we hiked about a half mile over a hill and through a bit of forest before descending to the beach. It was one of the nicest hikes we did.
At the end of the trail we had to climb over stacks of huge driftwood to get to the beach. It was quite an adventure and Tween Traveler, who loves nothing more than climbing and scrambling, loved it.
Once you’re on the beach, there is a long stretch of sand to the left. At low tide look for starfish on the large boulder at the edge of the shore.
To the right are the rocks with all the tide pools. As you climb around on the small rocks, look for fish, starfish, anemone, muscles, crabs and snails.
The green and white anemone open when they’re underwater and close tightly when the water level drops. Look for them in and out of the water to see the difference.
Give yourselves plenty of time here because it’s the kind of thing that can keep kids and adults fascinated for a while.
Important: The rocks are covered in barnacles that will cut your feet to bits, so sport sandals or waterproof hiking shoes are helpful.
Rich and Tween Traveler managed to go barefoot, but most people just kept their hiking boots on, which is fine as long as you manage to stay out of the water. This gets harder if the tide starts moving in.
Tip: Check out the NOAA Tide Tables for the area to find when the beach is at low tide is and try your best to visit in between one hour before to one hour for ample tide-pool exploring.
2. Our first coastal stop was Rialto Beach. It was a bit foggy and windy, but you don’t visit Pacific Northwest beaches to sunbathe and I thought it was scenic in its own way. It’s a popular spot for surfers, but we didn’t see any.
This expansive beach has cool rock formations and also has a lot of driftwood. Here it was scattered around and looked to me like the large bones a giant would drop from his dinner table. Kids were climbing all over them.
It doesn’t have the tide pools, but it’s a good beach for climbing, running around with a soccer ball or flying a kite.
Should You Visit Hoh Rain Forest?
You will read a lot in your guide book and on the park website about how the Hoh rain forest is a unique environment and has weather and plant and tree life that is completely different from the rest of this national park.
While this might be true scientifically, to the casual observer it doesn’t look much different than the Alpine side of the park. They both have a lot of big old trees and Jurassic ferns. A guided ranger walk might help you to appreciate its unique qualities and is probably a good thing to do if you come here.
The Old Growth Trail is the quintessential one for this area and was the only trail I would describe as crowded rather than just busy. You can manage it with a rugged stroller and we saw more families with toddlers here than anywhere else, which is good to know if you have little ones.
We like the adjoining Spruce Trail better. It had fewer people, Jurassic-looking giant ferns and big tree roots; we stopped by a river where we saw a beaver lodge.
The Verdict: We thought Hoh was pleasant and we enjoyed at least some of our hike, but it’s 88 miles from Port Angeles; a two-hour drive one way.
At the end of the day we wished we had skipped it and given ourselves more time to explore the seashore, which was both more interesting and more fun (and less driving).
It’s worth a visit if you’re staying nearby or if you’re based on the southwest side of the park and don’t plan to visit Hurricane Ridge. Otherwise, I would suggest prioritizing other places first and adding this in if you have time.
Get Out On Olympic’s Lakes
Lake Quinault, on the southwest side of the park, and Crescent Lake, on the northeast side, both have lodges and are popular places to stay.
You get to do lake activities like kayaking, fishing and SUPing for general vacation fun. But the key features of the park—the rain forest, alpine forest and coastline— are close by.
Where To Eat Around Olympic National Park:
Port Angeles Restaurants
While Port Angeles had plenty of dining options, it took a little work to find the places that weren’t chains or aimed at tourists and overpriced.
Despite it being on the water we couldn’t find a place that was inviting for an afternoon drink.
Breakfast & Picnic Provisions
Most of Olympic’s lodges are on the park’s periphery. There isn’t a restaurant inside the park. If you’re planning to head into the park for the whole day, get provisions for a picnic lunch you can carry with you.
The trouble is, we had a hard time finding a deli or sandwich shop where we could get lunch provisions quickly and easily. We did find good coffee pretty much anyplace we stopped for breakfast.
We discovered Blackbird Coffee House on our last morning in Port Angeles. Had we found this place earlier it would have been our go-to breakfast spot.
We had a good ham-cheddar egg sandwich and sweet-cream biscuits that were so good we didn’t even bother to put butter on them. It’s also your best bet for sandwiches, quiches and salads to go for lunch in the park.
On a previous morning we got both breakfast and lunch to go at Country Aire Natural Foods, a small natural-foods supermarket with a well-provisioned deli counter.
Our breakfast burrito was made to order with fresh ingredients and big enough to share. And the sandwiches we ordered for lunch were fine. But Tween Traveler’s rubbery bagel with cream cheese was disappointing. And the service is a little slow.
The doughnuts at Sasquatch Bakery have gotten a lot more creative and elaborate since we were there. Its jelly doughnuts were the family favorite because they had plenty of jam inside them. Based on this, I’d bet their custard and cream-filled doughnuts are good, too.
Dinner Options For Families
We had a good dinner at family-friendly Kokopelli, a place that fuses Pacific-Northwest ingredients with southwest flavors. I had a southwest-style pasta with black beans, corn salsa, green chilies and queso fresco and a salad with prickly pear dressing, a new mix of flavors for me, and I liked it.
Rich had Dungeness crab cakes and smoked salmon chowder. Tween traveler has house-made mac & cheese off of the kids’ menu.
To my chagrin, we somehow missed Barhop Brewing taproom, in both Sequim and Port Angeles. They serve their beer, a handful of small plates and creative pizzas with house-made sourdough crust. It’s another option for families that want something local, casual, not too expensive and good.
The Best Meal We Had in Olympic National Park
On our way back to Port Angeles from the park’s coastal areas, we stopped at Crescent Lake Lodge for dinner and it was easily the best dining decision we made here.
The lodge was built in 1915 and parts of it are on the National Registry of historic places. A cluster of cabins around a main lodge has a feeling of yesteryear rustic comfort.
We ate in the Singer Tavern, which has its own room and extends into the lobby. We settled into the dark-wood-panelled room with a lake view and large stone fireplace. We played board games and drank local wine and cider while we waited for our food.
Our freshly battered fish & chips was top-notch. But the salt-and-pepper wings were so salty, we think they probably made a mistake with the seasoning. They were quickly forgotten when dessert came.
Tween traveler kept the fudgy brownie with ice cream all to herself. Rich and I were more than happy with our warm marionberry cobbler with a crumble topping and ice cream.
Tip: Marionberries are a small, sometimes reddish blackberry you find all over the Oregon and Washington in the summer.
Basic Information For Exploring Olympic National Park
Where Should You Stay?
Choosing a Town For Your Olympic National Park Visit
The Northeast Olympic Peninsula
1. Port Angeles is a working port town. It’s not picturesque, but it’s a decent size with ample hotel and restaurant options. And its economy doesn’t revolve entirely around the park the way it does in other national park towns, which was appealing.
It’s on the doorstep of the northeast entrance and your best bet for exploring Hurricane Ridge, the hot springs, Lake Crescent, and the many easy and moderate hiking trails on the northeast side of the park.
2. We really liked Port Townsend when we passed through to catch a ferry for the next leg of our trip. It’s also a port town, but has a nice main street with a book store and other cute shops and a lively weekend farmers’ market.
It’s an hour’s drive from the park’s northeast entrance. It’s a fine option if you want to focus on that side of the park. But It’s too far a drive to the western parts of the peninsula.
3. A fair number of people stay in Sequim, which seems to be a good bet if you’re looking for a vacation rental instead of a hotel. It has a main street with shopping and restaurants, as well as a marina and lavender farms.
It’s about a 30-minute drive from the Hurricane Ridge park entrance. And is a good compromise between Port Townsend’s charm and Port Angeles’ convenience.
West & Southwest Olympic Peninsula
4. On the way to the Hoh rain forest we bought sandwiches to-go at a supermarket in Forks, which is known as the setting for the Twilight books and movies.
It’s worth noting that none of the movies were filmed in Forks (there did use plenty of other Pacific Northwest locations) and the author herself had never been to Forks until after the books came out.
I’m dubious as to how many places in the books have real-life counterparts in Forks, but this hasn’t stopped fans from visiting or the town from finding ways to capitalize on its new fame.
Forks is more of a commercial crossroads than a walkable town. There are a handful of motels and a couple of B&Bs and campgrounds. Dining options don’t go much beyond your typical takeout genres: burgers, Mexican, Chinese, pizza.
On the plus side, it’s centrally located: Twenty minutes from Mora and Rialto Beaches, 45 minutes from Hoh rain forest and an hour from Port Angeles.
Unless your Twilight fan insists or the central location really works for you, I have to say there are better towns to stay in near Olympic.
5. Some of the coast is on Native American land, so you won’t find hotels and restaurants. But Kalaloch Lodge is a national park lodge on the coast about 45 minutes south of Forks.
It’s a rustic seaside hotel with a main lodge, cabins with carports and a second hotel building. It’s on the water, a few minutes from the Ruby and Kalaloch beaches.
Its Creekside restaurant has ocean views and an emphasis on Pacific Northwest seafood and produce. If you stay in Forks or Lake Quineault consider driving down for lunch or dinner and a walk on the beaches.
It’s 45 minutes from Hoh rain forest but there is a rain forest hiking trail and the Kalaloch Creek nature trail a few minutes up the road.
The Port Angeles park entrance is nearly two hours away so if you want to stay at this lovely lodge, you might want to also plan a night or two on the northwest side of the park.
6. Lake Quineault is another popular destination with probably the nicest of the Park’s lodges. The upscale Lake Quineault Lodge hosted President Franklin Roosevelt shortly before he signed Olympic National Park into existence.
The lodge has an indoor pool, hot tub and sauna. Its Roosevelt dining room has lake views. Some rooms offer balconies, lake views or fire places.
There are rain forest trails nearby and the lake offers walking trails, scenery and water activities like kayaking.
The lodge and lake alone are worth a night or two here, but you almost certainly want to pair a stay here with a few nights on the other side of the park.
It’s 45 minutes to the Kalaloch beaches, 90 minutes to Hoh Rain Forest, nearly two hours to Second Beach and three hours to Hurricane Ridge.
Best Time of Year To Visit
Olympic National Park is open year-round and its high season is June through September. This is when everything is open, you’ll find a full roster of range programs and the weather is most likely to be good.
If you want to visit in the winter, the coast areas will be temperate and probably reliably open. But expect snow on Hurricane Ridge and check before you go for weather-related closures.
Tip: No matter when you visit, expect changeable weather. The temperatures vary by ten to 20 degrees around the park even in summer. And you never know when a rain shower will pass through. Layering is the way to go, and keep rain jackets with you.
It’s worth mentioning that we were there during a summer when the West Coast had a lot of wildfires. Even though we were well away from any of the fires, we noticed it stinging our eyes when we were up on Hurricane Ridge and had heard that it had been obscuring the views on some days.
How Many Days Do You Need?
The park is large and famous for its diverse environments. I would say the attractions you can’t miss are Hurricane Ridge and the seashore. Each of those is at least half a day plus driving time, and i recomment you explore both of them leisurely.
If you plan to visit Hoh Rain forest or spend a lot of time at any of the lakes that adds another day or two.
Then it all depends on how much additional time you want to spend on the park’s many lovely hiking trails.
Getting to Port Angeles
We drove to Port Angeles From Portland, which is four hours away. The town is two-and-a-half to three hours from Seattle, depending on whether you take the ferries across Puget Sound or drive south around it. It’s four-and-half-hours from Vancouver, BC, including a short ferry ride.
If you’re flying in, I’d price airfares to Seattle and Olympia.
From Portland and Olympia, Route 5 is the fastest route, but it’s a boring highway. At Olympia, we switched to route 101. It’s more direct, which helps to make up for it being a slower local road. More important, it hugs long, skinny Dobbs Bay and is more scenic.
We stopped at Potlatch State Park to stretch our legs and enjoy some of that scenery. It was too chilly to entertain the notion of swimming, but it was pretty and we saw clusters of oysters growing in the water, which I’d never seen before. There are bathrooms and picnic tables, too.
We didn’t pass many towns. There were restaurants here and there. Cell-phone reception isn’t reliable so you have to take your chances with what you come across.
We stopped at a place called Geoduck, 28 miles up the road from Potlatch. It looked questionable from the outside. But we ate on a lovely back porch with a view of the marshes and the bay. And the food was good. I recommend the fried oyster BLT.
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All photos by Eileen Gunn© except the doughnuts (Sasquatch Bakery), Crescent Lake Lodge (NPS) and Olympic Lodge (Olympic Lodge)