Outdoor focused Pacific Northwest road trip

Post date: 2019-06-17 03:18:43
Views: 147
We're planning a roadtrip! Roughly, Bend OR --> Columbia River Gorge --> Olympic National Park -->Squamish, BC --> Seattle. If you're familiar with that part of the world, please pick apart/augment my plans within.

Hi everyone, we're taking a trip from June 22-July 4 (13 days) through OR, WA and BC. We're a couple, both 30ish years old, and we're okay with long drives. We'll be on East Coast time, so we're also okay with getting up Very Very Early. We're mostly camping and doing outdoor focused activities and we'll be spending a fair amount of time climbing on the trip. We like food and beer.

We have already spent a fair amount of time in Portland and have visited Crater National Park, so we're going to give both of those a pass this time around.

Here's our plan:

Sat, June 22-- Fly into Portland at 11:00am, pick up our rental car and drive to Smith Rock State Park (3 hrs)

Sun thru Tues, June 23-25-- Smith State Park/Bend (for climbing, primarily, will also do some hiking and looking around Bend)

Wed, June 26- Drive to Quinault RF in Olympic National Park and camp at Graves Creek (I'm just assuming we'll be able to get a spot on a Wednesday evening, if not we'll figure something out).

I was thinking to drive via the Columbia River Gorge, it's going to be a long day so we won't have a ton of time to stop and see things but it seems like it's pretty scenic even just for a drive and would add less than an hour to our total ltime. I'm not sure if it makes sense to stay on the southern side of the river or the northern side (Hwy 84 or 18?)

I'm planning that this would take 7.5 hours without stops, realistically I'm assuming we'll be on the road for 11 hours or so if we take our time, stop for groceries, etc. Long day, but we would get an early start.

Thur, June 27-- Olympic National Park. Hike in Quinault RF (Pony Bridge), then go to Rialto beach to camp there (we have a permit). I really wanted to see the Hoh RF but I don't know if we can make it work on this trip because my understanding is that we need to time the hike on Rialto Beach to a fairly low tide, which means we need to be to Rialto Beach by 3pm at the latest.

Fri, June 28-- ONP. Hike out of Rialto Beach midday and drive to Port Angeles. I'm anticipating this may be a long drive with the Hwy 101 construction. Stay in a hotel there, do laundry, shower, etc.

Sat, June 29-- ONP. Spend the morning on Hurricane Ridge hiking Klannane Ridge, then catch the 2pm ferry from Port Townsend to Coupeville (I have a reservation). Drive to Squamish, BC. I'm anticipating with stops and the border crossing this will take around 5 hours-- is there anything we should be sure to hop out of the car and check out on the way? I'm tempted to check out Vancouver but I feel like it's probably too much.

Sun, June 30-- Squamish area (climbing and hiking)

Mon, July 1-- Squamish area (climbing and hiking)

Tues, July 2-- Squamish area (climbing and hiking)

Wed, July 3-- Drive to Seattle and spend rest of the day there, probably mostly wandering around and grabbing dinner with friends.

Thurs, July 4-- Fly out of Seattle at 2pm
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