Olympic Peninsula - Mora Campground & Rialto Beach

I skipped out of work early, meet up with Gunjan and we caught a one hour ferry ride over to Bermerton. As luck would have it, they were working on the Hood Canal Bridge and we were forced to take a rather long detour. Despite having lived in Washington State for over three years, this was our first time to the Olympic Peninsula. We arrived at Mora campground at 10pm and the sign said it was full. Sleeping along the road did not seem like an attractive alternative, so we drove into the campground and amazingly found an empty spot. As we set up our tent, cars crept around the campground looking for spots. When I went to pay for the spot, I found out an RV had booked the spot for three nights. Gunjan talked with the people in the next campground and they said they saw the RV leave early in the morning and it hadn’t been back. That settled it; the spot was ours.

After a egg and sausage breakfast, we headed over to Rialto beach to get some sun and sand. There was a marine cloud layer over us, but it looked like it would break up soon. However, once we got the beach there was a tremendous amount of fog and the sun was no where to be seen. We decided to go for a hike along the beach and we made our way North to Hole in the Wall. We headed back to the car and grabbed our beach stuff. We began to realize that the fog may not burn off, but we set up camp on the beach anyways and read and drank some beers. Sure enough, the fog didn’t dissipate at all that day. You could feel the sun through the fog, you just couldn’t see it. After a nice dinner and campfire, we called it a night.

When we woke up the next day, the sun was out and shining. We ate breakfast, packed up our gear and headed back to the beach to see if the fog layer was still there. And it was! We decided to explore the Peninsula via car, and headed off to Neah Bay. When we stopped for gas, the attendant told Gunman that it is always foggy on the beach this time of year. After that, we went to Port Townsend and sat by the water for awhile and then to Bremerton to catch a ferry back to Seattle.