The Olympic Coast - Third Beach

On Sunday, we headed out to perhaps our favorite place along the Olympic Coast, Third Beach. It is a 1.4 mile hike through a coastal forest of Sitka Spruce and Western Hemlock to get to the beach. Luckily, unlike the 90's of Saturday, a fog layer had rolled in keeping temperatures in the 70's.

Fog drifting between the trees

Hilina loves examining shelf fungi, looking for banana slugs, and generally exploring the forest

Upon arrival at the beach, we just relaxed along the sandy banks and let Hilina play. The tide was rolling in, so we did look at a few creatures on the last exposed rocks before those were eventually covered by water.

The last rock

We did a couple of laps of the mile-long beach from headland to headland. After a while the fog began to lift, creating some interesting looks at the headlands.

Hilina building cities in the sand with feathers

Eventually, even the waterfall at Taylor Point became visible. As the fog lifted, the temperature rose...But, luckily is remained in the upper 70's to low 80's. That and the shade of the forest made the hike back pretty tolerable.