A Five-Day Olympic Peninsula Road TripA Five-Day Olympic Peninsula Road Trip

Trek up a corridor of water and woods to enter the Olympic realm and shellfish nirvana. Come as you are.

The HOOD CANAL, a glacier-scooped fjord slashed down Puget Sound’s west side, works like a funnel. This mesmerizing waterway channels travelers and cultural energy through a narrow passage of small towns, fertile places and wildlands–and lays out an itinerary to briny finds and intriguing byways. Bring hiking boots and cooler for oysters.

10 A.M. Since 1890, family-owned TAYLOR SHELLFISH has defined the bounty of Northwest waters. Its small Shellfish Market in Sheldon is stocked deep with fresh oysters–Pacifics, Olympias and Kumamotos–to shuck as you will.

11 A.M. Hoodsport’s FJORD OYSTER BANK satisfies immediate brine fever. Get three or a half-dozen on the half-shell, then browse this de facto cultural center’s tiny bookstore.

LUNCH Among Northwest oysterfolk, all talk leads inevitably to HAMA HAMA. A bony mountain of shells marks the turn to the century-old outfit’s Oyster Saloon. Check for serving hours for raw oysters and beer; shop the cold case, big tinned selection and live-crab tank.

1 P.M. Adventurers could take many worthy turns off the main route. Try DUCKABUSH ROAD, which quickly transforms from asphalt to a gravel wilderness portal. The MURHUT FALLSTRAIL, short but vigorous, ends at a mystical gusher in woods of deepest green.

3 P.M. After a call on Quilcene–a micro-cultural hub thanks to arts collective GRAY COAST GUILDHALL–detouron Center Road. CHIMACUM is quietly garnering a farm-to-fork reputation. Loop down Egg and I Road; stop in or call at Egg and I Pork for hazelnut-finished heritage meat. For free manure and compost offers, just keep your eyes open.

4:30 P.M. Just a glimpse of FINNRIVER CIDER FARM brings an easy sigh of relief after a day on road and trail. Gravel lot. Sprawling fields. Barnlike tasting room with ciders on tap. Order a pint in a mason jar, grab a picnic table and check the busy live-music schedule.

A Victorian port town oozes history and charm. Walk it, then walk it some more.

DOWNTOWN

Staked out at the Sound’s gateway during the Civil War, Port Townsend loomed large in settler dreams. Magnates and capitalists flocked, as did seafarers, saloon-keepers—you know the type—to create one of the West’s most interesting wanders. Start at the sparkling MARITIME CENTER, a hangar of racing sculls and chandler’s workshops marked by a Jamestown S’Kallam totem pole. Coffee at VELOCITY connects the dots of community–peruse posters for seamanship classes and rowing clubs, eavesdrop on cycling plans and art critiques. Weave between docks and piers and Water Avenue, soaking up salty ambience. Then, two bookstores will hold you for a bit. Indie-gem IMPRINT has been in action since the ‘70s, with a strong showing of regional writers, small presses and Indigenous voices. Right across the street, WILLIAM JAMES BOOKSELLER, one of the great used bookstores: a cavernous trove, fathoms deep on every subject under the sun.

UPTOWN

An elegant vintage fountain on Washington Street marks the staircase climb to Uptown, originally Port Townsend’s polite side. Today the mix feels charmingly vibrant: Finistere sets its fine-dining tables right across from treasured dive bar UPTOWN PUB, at the heart of Lawrence Street’s shops and art stops. Above all, Uptown is a house-gawker’s dream, with one imposing Victorian jewel after another. (The STARRETT HOUSE, built in 1889 and now a B & B, is a useful landmark.) Uptown tumbles down to the water at CHETZEMOKA PARK, a rambling domain of lapping waves, songbirds and deer.

FORT WORDEN

Port Townsend’s strategic location once meant artillery up above town. Now, this old military base is a first-class place to ride a bike or hike an endless warren of trails to its spooky abandoned gun emplacements and bunkers. A collection of creative non-profits operates in the whitewashed Army buildings, including the Port Townsend School of Woodworking. Travelers can rent out old quarters for a key vantage of city and Sound.

The road from gateway town Port Angeles climbs into the National Park, reaching misty trailheads.

MARYMERE FALLS Like a 1970s soul classic, this jaunt out of the Lake Crescent area is smooth but heavy too. An easy-rolling trail, paved for much of the way, gently probes dense woods, connecting a workaday parking lot to the wilderness boundary. Things get more profound as wood-railed dirt stairs wind up to a view of the falls, coursing down over a stone cliff face livened up by neon moss.

STORM KING Branching off the Marymere Trail, here’s something completely different: a 4-mile haymaker, round trip, involving notable scrambles over rocks and roots and lots of vigorous ascent (it climbs 1,700 feet). The rewards: twisting madrona trees, gigantic cedars and views of Lake Crescent, opal-blue, below.

AURORA RIDGE This moss-lined magic carpet ventures through aspen stands, across numberless tiny creeks, the Sol Duc River rushing in the ravine below. Do a couple miles out and back, or keep going for longer adventures to Eagle Lake and Lake Crescent.

Venture to some of the West Coast’s most far-flung places to catch a wave.

You wouldn’t necessarily call the Olympic Peninsula a surf “scene.” Combine the coast’s long stretch of protected wilderness and the Northwest’s reputation for fierce weather, and these become waves you have to earn. The obvious place to start is LA PUSH, the Quileute Reservation town at the literal end of the road from Forks. FIRST BEACH, the arc of coastline boarding the tiny hamlet to the west, offers the best-known beach break and the most reliable conditions. RIALTO BEACH also gets a nod if the stars (waves–you get the metaphor) align–rare. More intrepid souls can equip for SHI SHI BEACH, a hike-in only option. For rentals, lessons, retreats and an off-grid lodging option not far afield, check in with LA PUSH SURF ADVENTURES.

Venture to some of the West Coast’s most far-flung places to catch a wave.

Every big national park has its signature experience, whether that’s Old Faithful’s blast in Yellowstone, early light on Yosemite’s Half Dome. In a park with Olympic’s diverse landscapes, it could be hard to pick just one. Except the HOH RAIN FOREST exists: this park’s visual crescendo.

The undulating HOH VALLEY ROAD, along the braided Hoh River, makes a worthy journey in itself. For a surreal commemoration of history, pause at the NIKOLAI MEMORIAL, a kiosk of plaques telling of a Russian colonial ship run aground in 1808, and its crew’s desperate times on the peninsula. (Along with the remarkable tale, this is for sure the only place in the world you’ll see the flags of Russia, Washington State and the Quileute and Hoh tribes fly next to each other.)

Thepark’s HOH VALLEY VISITOR CENTER anchors one of the Northwest’s most popular travel destinations. Popular for good reason: In an average year, 140 inches of rain fall here, lifeblood of continental America’s finest surviving temperate rainforest. Ecologists have lately identified this dense, teeming collection of ancient trees as a key to mitigating climate change. From soil fungi to mosses and lichens in staggering variety to the Roosevelt elk browsing its understory, the forest is an ark of complex life. The first impression, however, is simple enough: the place looks amazing.

Take the short and easy HALL OF MOSSES TRAIL, where trees tower and twist under veils of psychedelic green. Many of the octopus-limbed maples here suggest fairy-tale creatures, maybe ominous ones. But all this pillowy moss and the lulling pulse of flowing water make this a place of softness, a wilderness that feels as gentle as it is humbling. (Just the root structures of some of the fallen nurse logs, which sprout whole glades of younger trees, stand double or triple an average human’s height.)

Hikes get a little longer, in the form of the SPRUCE NATURE TRAIL (just over a mile), or much longer, in the form of the HOH RIVER TRAIL. The latter stretches 18 miles up to the glaciers of Mount Olympus–a different biome, in other words. If you’re up for that, it’s a path that will give you Olympic in full.