8 Days in Seattle, North Cascades, Mt. Rainier, and Olympic National Parks
Day 1: North Cascades National Park
North Cascades is one of the least visited US National Parks and we were curious what our experience there was going to be like. I think we went into it with expectations that it’d be a hidden gem, a local favorite that had the potential to be one of our favorites as well. Our first impression was not this. It’s a fairly small park with some vista points along the main road but, after visiting so many spectacular parks during this trip, we weren’t amazed by the views here. All the campgrounds were booked when we originally looked so we were staying at a Hipcamp just outside the park. It was in this gated forest community—a neighborhood of wooden A-frame houses, camper vans, and open sites for visitors to pitch a tent. Our site was right near a creek which was great white noise when we were sleeping. We still didn’t sleep too well. At this point we’d camped for a total of 8 nights (plus countless uncomfortable Airbnb and hotel beds) and it was starting to catch up to us.
Day 2: North Cascades National Park
Today was our “big” hike day, as we’ve had in a lot of other parks. We drove to the Cascade Pass trailhead and, while we were glad it was off the same road our Hipcamp was, we didn’t expect it to take an hour to get there. It’s not far in terms of miles, but the road itself is extremely bumpy and not well paved so we and everyone else drove fairly slow. The hike itself was a few miles of boring switchbacks and then a short pass through a nice meadow. The view at the top was nice but I think we were just so tired that we didn’t enjoy it as much as we could have. Seriously, this amount of camping and hiking was an adjustment for our bodies and we’re starting to feel the effects of it. We made our way down and back to camp so that we could eat dinner, build a fire, and go to sleep.
Day 3: Seattle
We were pleasantly surprised that our Airbnb in Seattle was only a short drive away, just under 2 hours total. We basically had half a day to kill before we were allowed to check in so we stopped by some outlet stores to continue this long search for my rain jacket. We have a few things that we need to buy for our international portion of our trip so we used this time to browse and do some in-person research (which just means feeling the material of items we saw online and trying on endless articles of clothing).
At some point we saw that there was a Baekjeong not too far away from where we were shopping so we decided to go. Baekjeong is a popular Los Angeles Korean BBQ chain that recently opened up a location in San Jose. I know this because I’ve been seeing it all over Instagram and the reservations are highly-coveted. It’s booking out well in advance so you either have to wait a while before going or go at a less ideal time. We assumed the Baekjeong here wouldn’t be as hard to get into because open reservations were plentiful. We seized the opportunity and, lo and behold, we were the only ones in the restaurant. Granted it was 2pm on a Friday and a lot of people are probably working but, to put it in perspective, San Jose didn’t have any open reservations at this same time.
The food was good and we enjoyed our experience while we were there. There are few, if any, places we’d wait a long time for and this is no exception. I’m not sure what the hype is for the San Jose location but I hope it dies down soon.
We ended up staying out later than expected and we still needed to go grocery shopping. We did that quickly and checked into our Airbnb and relaxed for the rest of the night.
Day 4: Seattle
We’ve been to Seattle multiple times and never explored the Ballard, Fremont, or University Village areas. This time we stayed just north of Ballard and spent the morning and afternoon visiting these areas to see what they were about. We grabbed lunch at Seattle Biscuit company. It was good but we waited a long time due to the rush. As I was just saying with Baekjeong, there are few places we’d wait that long for. This also wasn’t an exception, however we did enjoy the meal once it arrived.
We drove by the Fremont Troll on the way to University Village and it was smaller than we expected. There was also quite a bit of construction around but that didn’t stop the handful of people we saw standing in front of the troll for pictures. We continued to University Village to go shopping and it was a cute outdoor area with a nice ambiance. The weather was great and it wasn’t overwhelmingly crowded so we took our time walking around and going in and out of stores to continue our research.
We went back to our Airbnb and chilled for the rest of the afternoon. Keon napped and I caught up on some TV shows. I cooked dinner tonight and it was nice to work around a kitchen again. We went line dancing in Puyallup and it was one of the more fun country bars we’ve been to. We had a great time but needed to get back to our Airbnb early so we could sleep and prepare for our Spartan Race tomorrow.
Day 5: Spartan Race in Snohomish
Our heat time is at 12:30pm but we still woke up a little early to eat breakfast, pack our bags, and drive to Snohomish for the race. The last race we did was a Stadion event at Oracle Park in San Francisco and it was very different than what this one looked to be. Set on open grounds, there was a lot more dust and dirt, with stages, tents, and food trucks. It seemed more like a festival and more like an event since you could see a lot more spectators and racers hanging out. We hadn’t trained for this race and really haven’t had a regular workout schedule since we hit the road, so we didn’t know what kind of physical abilities we’d have for this race. It ended up being fine and actually less strenuous than the Stadion event because you don’t have to run up and down a stadium’s worth of bleachers. There were also no burpees and rather penalty loops ranging from walking a lap with kettlebells overhead to running up and down hills, which I would take over burpees any day. Some of the obstacles were different than what we did before and a handful of them were muddy. That was a fun thing to experience—I’d never slid into pools of muddy water and climbed up slick, muddy hills before. There were many highlights today but one of my favorites was how far I made it on the monkey bars this time. This was an obstacle that I couldn’t get before, and I’m not strong at monkey bars in general. I was able to make it over 75% of the way this time before feeling surprised and subsequently slipping (probably because I lost focus). I did the penalty loop but still walked away feeling accomplished.
When we finished the race we took our sweet time walking around the grounds: taking pictures at the backdrops, hosing off only some of the thick layers of mud on our skin, hair, and clothes, and sipping a celebratory beer. We drove back to our Airbnb and spent an extremely long time cleaning ourselves and all our stuff. We indulged in food and Sunday Night Football at night.
Day 6: Seattle
We woke up sore today—no surprise there. Today was chill and consisted of a lot of TV and laptop time. We placed a few online orders, some to pick up in Portland on our way back home to San Jose because they don’t have sales tax in Oregon, and booked some things for our upcoming Japan trip.
After watching some Monday Night Football, we went line dancing at a bar nearby.
Day 7: Mount Rainier and Olympic National Parks
We checked out of our Airbnb and drove to Mount Rainier to check it out for a few hours. It ended up being really foggy and cold so we lost hope in seeing any nice views. We still did a short and easy hike in the Paradise area of the park and, while half of if was foggy, we still got a glimpse of some mountains on our way back to the parking lot. We also saw a few marmots that were really cute. The clouds didn’t look like they’d clear up any time soon and it we needed to drive 4 hours to our campsite in Olympic National Park so we decided to hit the road and get to our site before sundown.
The weather ended up being worse in Olympic National Park and it rained for most of the evening and night. When it seemed like it was lightening up, we heated up dinner and then ate it in the truck. We got our tent set up really quickly and turned in early. There’s not much we can do when it’s raining outside.
Day 8: Olympic National Park
It didn’t rain today but it was still damp from the rain just hours before. Keon had a lot of trouble sleeping last night, which meant that I didn’t sleep well either. In a tent, you can hear and feel any sound and movement, so when one of us can’t sleep, we both can’t sleep. Rather than do a big hike today, we drove around to explore different parts of the park. We drove to Rialto Beach where we sat on a giant downed tree and got soaked by a wave, grabbed some lunch in the town of Forks—fun fact that we learned there was that Forks is where Twilight is based, but not filmed—and then we hung out at Lake Crescent. It got pretty windy and cold there but we still wanted to enjoy the sunshine and be by the lake so we sat in our truck and watched a downloaded movie on Netflix. Balance. We later built and enjoyed our last campfire of this road trip and slept a tad bit better than the night before.
