Yeah, it’s Memorial Day Weekend and the start of camping season!
Like always we take full advantage of the long weekend and go someplace remote, far away and/or someplace really hard to get to. It’s a tradition that has served us well until now. Well, don’t get me wrong, it was an awesome new adventure, but I knew right from the start this would be difficult, not because of the constant rain forecasted, or the distance traveled (30 miles in 3 days), nor the extremely heavy pack full of crap that I never did use, but for the long, slick, muddy hike out. This was an out and back trip, so the tricky part is the game plan. Do we hike the entire 13.5 miles in one day and just do day trips or tackle the majority of the mileage the first day, have a short second day and then the long slog home? We choose the later. In the end it was well worth it, but sitting here typing 4 days later my legs, knees and feet are still sore, so there is something to be said about over doing it. Although, everything from here till Labor Day will be gravy. I am sure we will continue to be overly ambitious in the future, but I will certainly not bring 5 lbs of clothes again no matter what the forecast calls for, because I always seem to wear the same outfit the entire time. What was I thinking? Anyway, here are some snaps for our Memorial Day Weekend hike into the Enchanted Valley in the Olympic National Park 05/26/2013.
All and all it was a great trip and I wouldn’t have changed a thing, except for maybe investing in a waterproof bag for my camera, so I could have taken some of the most incredible landscape shots on our hike out. There was a brief moment where is was raining heavily and then suddenly the sun broke through the clouds to reveal a scene of incredible beauty for less than a minute that will be forever burned into my brain cells. I would like to try to describe here, but would only fail miserably in lack of accurate enough words to describe it’s true spectacle… Moments like that will keep me going back out there for more and more…
