Today had promise, but fell apart. We woke up to a massive rain storm, in a rainforest – whodathunkit? We packed up the stuff inside the tent, and then dismantled the tent under the rainfly to try to stay as dry as possible.

We went to the Hoh visitor center to find out about the local, likely small, and hopefully dry, hikes. They referred us to the “Hall of Mosses” trail. This is a 3/4 mile loop hike through the temperate rainforest. The views were great. It was a pleasant hike, though a bit… damp.

After that, we let the Hoh valley to head to the coast. We decided to stop for a hot meal and a drink on the way out. We stopped at the Hard Rain Cafe – this was the beginning of the suckage. The coffee sucked (Folgers), the food was… crap. If in the area, this is a must skip venue.

We drove down the road to the beach. It was 1) rainy, 2) nice, 3) full of people. While nice, people in large numbers are unpleasant. We got some views and continued on. We went through the Quinault rainforest loop. It was nice, but it was not as good as Hoh.

We then continued down the coast. We had intended to stop at the Kurt Cobain Memorial Park in his hometown, but… We got ice cream in a town called Aberdeen, WA, continued down the road, and about 40 miles later realized that Aberdeen was his hometown and we missed the park by about 4 blocks. We then passed by Cape Disappointment before leaving Washington – this seemed fitting for the day.

We continued on and got over to Oregon. We were planning to visit the Lewis & Clark National Historic Park, but we got there at 6:30PM and it closes at 5. We ate some chowder in Astoria – Lara liked it, I wasn’t super keen on it, and we also (somehow) found a motel (damn near everything was full all the way down the coast)- the only one with rooms available we could find was a smoking room in Newport, continuing the meh-ness of the day. The room reeks of smoke and is a bit… well… run down.

Tomorrow: a quick jaunt to Corvallis to recuperate for 3 days.

STATS: 14 days, 6 states (+1 province), 10 hikes, 49.25 miles, 2 missed destinations.