Rainy Day at Lake Crescent | Washington

 

 

 

The first day back from Seattle after our engagement session, we decided to have a little look at Lake Crescent. We had heard a few people say really good things, and the photos online looked really pretty, so we figured why not check it out? We started our hike from the Lake Crescent Lodge, which was shut down for the winter, but located only 20 minutes from our campsite at the Elwha Dam RV Park. It was a very easy day trip.

 

 

As soon as we pulled up, we were struck by just how beautiful this lake is. Lake Crescent is located at the base of the Olympic Mountains. The water was a beautiful shade of blue, and the fog clung to the mountains surrounding it, creating amazing textures all around us. The day we visited happened to be rainy- a fact that we just accepted as an every day thing by the time our visit in the Olympic National Park was over. We told ourselves this was a good thing because it gave us some solitude from any other tourists (though, probably not that many other people vacation to Olympic National Park in the winter…). We also later discovered that this winter had a whole lot of extra precipitation due to El Nino. There was so much rain that even some people living here were getting sick of the rain. I imagine that would take a lot! Oh well, we were already here, so we decided to just embrace it.

 

After hanging around by the lodge for a bit and taking in the views (can you imagine the weddings people have out here?! Dreamland!) , we decided to try hiking along the lake. Only, there are no dogs allowed the rainforest trails.  Migo was actually pretty happy about this. We dried him off with a towel, blasted the heat for a few minutes to get the car nice and toasty, and snuggled him up in a little blanket for extra coziness before heading off on a short hike. He tried to act sad about not coming with mom and dad, but we knew he was happy to stay warm and dry.

 

As soon as we headed into the trails we entered a gorgeous rainforest. Moss just covered everything. It was so stunning! Only thing is, we soon discovered the intense amounts of rain were really testing the limits of our rain gear. My friend’s REI jacket was soaking through and the storm jackets on our cameras were starting to take in water as well. We took shelter inside of a big cedar to trouble shoot and ended up cutting our hike short for the sake of our gear. We were pretty bummed, but figured we had plenty of time left to still fully enjoy the rainforest. Tomorrow we planned to head into the Hoh Rainforest and had some great plans to keep our cameras protected from the elements. More on that tomorrow!

 

 

Thanks for reading! ~Shelley Hartman, North Carolina – Washington Destination Wedding Photographer