I am writing this from inside my bivy, on the floor of the Olympic National Forest, along side one of the bridge crossings of the Sol Duc river. Of course, it won’t be posted for another four days, but such is life.

Dehydrated Chicken Soup

After a few weeks of making food for the trail, it’s time for the first Hike-a-thon backpack. The trip out here was eventful – an hour late start as i had to complete some online training, a lost credit card I had to have the husband cancel, a friendly ranger and a clearly bored-out-of-his-wits ranger, and a vanished road – or at least GoogleMaps giving us bad directions. But the hike so far has been fairly uneventful. We didn’t hit the bugs tonight, but the next two nights are at lakes, so I expect my luck will change.

Sol Duc Falls for Hike-a-thon

The first trail we took, Lover’s Lane from Sol Duc Hot Springs, was quite pretty, and the late afternoon sun added to its charm. The falls themselves were more spectacular than I expected, though clearly it’s quite popular, and people have even left their hats behind as a gift to the falls. Or the hats blew off people’s heads, and they opted not to risk death retrieving a hat. Whichever.

From there, it was a long four and a half miles to our campsite. We passed a family heading out without staying after the kids were disappointed at the lack of a “feature”, even though it was right on a creek. We passed a couple who had set up in their campsite earlier. And a number of people who had clearly been day hiking farther in and kept asking how far it was to a parking lot we had not come from.

Upper Sol Duc Bridge Campsite

Our campsite is literally just off the Sol Duc River , right next to some falls. Makes it hard to find a spot to pee, but a lovely accompaniment to dinner. We didn’t waste time getting to that dinner once we arrived, and our leisurely pace brought us to bedtime, from which I write you this report.

Tomorrow, I’ll be “seeing” you from Lunch Lake.