The Olympic Peninsula is a vast piece of our state; its beaches and lakes, great hikes and temperate rainforest are alluring. This special place is also a great family vacation locale, as you can easily squeeze in a ton of fun over a long weekend.
I have a deep love of animals and our children have inherited this love. With that in mind, we headed to Sequim and the Olympic Game Farm, where you pay an entrance fee, drive along a track — and watch as various animals come right up to your car.
We purchased two loaves of bread to feed the animals along the route. Deer, elk, llamas, yak and buffalo approached the car. Habituated to the routine, they all sought a helping of wheat bread. The children squealed in the back seat as again and again an animal head would duck into the car, sometimes with its long tongue out, seeking a treat.
There were also bears in enclosures that would sit up and beg for you to throw them some bread. Wild cats and wolves also paced inside pens (we did not feed them). While this may seem a very orchestrated animal experience — nothing like experiencing a herd of elk in the woods up at White Pass — it is still thrilling to experience.
The Olympic Game Farm originally worked in concert with Walt Disney Studios for nearly three decades, and several Disney movies included “animal actors” at the farm location. More recently, the farm is dedicated to being a safe and fun place to learn about animals while offering an up-close experience.
After the game park, we headed out to Dungeness Spit, which offers a short walk in an old-growth forest to a long and beautiful spit of land that stretches out into the Strait of Juan de Fuca. If you take the time, this could be an all-day, 11-mile hike out to the tip. But watch the tide charts.
Because I am gluten-free, traveling always has an added challenge of finding yummy food on the road. Luckily, Sequim has one of the best gluten-free restaurants I’ve experienced in the state. At Nourish Sequim, it was easy to order to-go food for the entire family, and everyone gobbled it up back at our home for the night.
Our lodging was unique. Our hosts had renovated two old train cabooses to be tiny home rentals. Our family of five fit just fine inside a caboose. The cabooses were right down the road from the animal farm and were on an airstrip, as the neighborhood was filled with pilots; each house had an attached airplane hangar.
In the morning, we crossed the road to a field where donkeys from the farm were grazing. Our hosts encouraged us to play with a foal, or baby donkey.
My husband wasn’t quite so sure about this plan, mainly because he knew we would all be begging for a miniature baby donkey after this experience. He was correct. I am still daydreaming about a miniature baby donkey in our backyard here in Yakima.
From Sequim, we traveled into the Olympic National Park and hiked the Spruce Railroad Trail alongside Lake Crescent. The lake is famous for its gorgeous blue colors; a lack of nitrogen in the lake inhibits the growth of algae. Along this trail is a footbridge over a particularly deep blue bowl and many hikers stop here to jump in. Most of the family jumped into Devil’s Punchbowl while the others cheered us on.
I am infamous for planning family vacations that are far too busy and for misjudging drive times between locations. This trip was no exception. From Sequim we did a hike at Lake Crescent, then drove over to the Sol Duc hot springs area and hiked to Sol Duc Falls, all before driving to the coast to stay in a National Park cabin at Kalaloch Lodge.
I remember doing the Sol Duc Falls hike the last time I was in the park and I knew it was easy with big rewards. Our kiddos don’t always embrace the hiking idea so I’ve started wearing flip-flops and calling them walks through the forest. I bargain that if it’s under three miles and I can do it in sandals, then it’s a walk, not a hike. The waterfall at the end was glorious and the kids had fun playing in and on the old-growth trees along the path.
We also visited the Hoh Rain Forest. Due to the pandemic, more people than ever are enjoying all that nature and what our National Parks have to offer. The Olympic National Forest is no exception, and we waited over an hour to get a parking spot for a short walk through the rainforest.
Here we saw trees dripping with ferns and vines, and a denseness to the forest that was otherworldly. While it isn’t warm like the jungles of Costa Rica, these forests are similarly amazing.
Leaving the Hoh, we pulled over so Josh could go fly fishing in the Hoh River. He didn’t have any luck, but it gave us an extra hour along the river.
We planned to spend two nights at the coast in order to get up in the darkest part of the night to see the occasional bioluminescence that occasions the Pacific Coast during warmer weather.
Josh and I left the kids asleep in our cabin on our second night and stood for 30 minutes in an ink-black night, staring in vain at the ocean waves. No glowing blues or greens were detected. There are several spots along the Western Washington coast where bioluminescence can be seen, as well as in the San Juan Islands. There are even night kayak tours out of Bellingham that offer you a chance to see it.
Our favorite lodging of the last year was the cabooses. I am always searching out interesting places to stay: treehouses, yurts, cabooses, fire lookouts. The quirkier the better.
If we go to the Olympic Peninsula again, I would change the trip and just do Sequim and Lake Crescent, possibly adding in Hurricane Ridge. The drive is long from Yakima and I know my family always enjoys less car time, more down time, and maybe even more cuddles from baby miniature donkeys.
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