Western National Park Trip: Part 6 (August 2025)

Day 13

North Cascades National Park was our 45th park that we have visited together. North Cascades is about an hour northeast of Seattle. North Cascades is the 2nd least visited of the national parks in the US. It is the least visited of those parks in the 48 contiguous states.

After visiting the Visitor’s Center, we began our day by hiking the Trail of the Cedars which is actually two loop trails joined together. This one mile roundtrip hike includes large cedar trees, a suspension bridge, the Skagit River, the Gorge hydroelectric plant, and Ladder Creek Falls.

We were planning on hiking the 3.6-mile round trip Thunder Knob Trail which overlooks Diablo Lake. However, we were still feeling under the weather from our flu, so we decided to drive up to an overlook of Diablo Lake. This lake has a strange bluish-green color. Diablo Lake is green due to glacial flour, which is finely ground rock created by glaciers eroding bedrock. When this rock flour is suspended in the glacial meltwater, it acts like tiny prisms, scattering and reflecting the green and blue wavelengths of sunlight while absorbing other colors, resulting in the lake's signature vibrant, milky turquoise-green color. We want to come back someday to kayak Lake Diablo.

Again, because of illness, we ended our day with a three-hour drive to Tacoma, Washington.

Day 14

Olympic National Park was our 46th national park that we have visited together. We began by hiking the 1/2-mile loop Living Forest Nature Trail. We then hiked the 1/2-mile loop High Ridge Trail. Next, we drove to the Marymere Falls Trailhead and hiked 2 miles to Marymere Falls and back. All of these trails highlighted the temperate rainforest, huge cedar trees, ferns and mosses, and waterfalls that are a big part of this beautiful national park.

This park is bound on the west side by the Pacific Ocean. We spent the afternoon driving to Ruby Beach to explore the beach area. The surf was rugged, and the beach had the largest driftwood I had ever seen.

Our last hike of the day was through the Ho Rainforest on the Spruce Nature Trail (1.5-mile loop). Again, the huge cedar trees were amazing to see. After our hike we began our four-hour drive back to Tacoma, Washington.