Olympic National Park - Hoh Rain Forest

 After North Cascades we headed south through Seattle and spent a couple of nights between Olympic and Rainier National Parks. The first day we visited Olympic National Park. It's such a huge park we would have taken several days and we only had one, it was toward the end of the trip and we were ready to head home.

Olympic didn't have timed tickets to enter but they did have metered entry, they only allowed a car every so often to pass through the gate. We sat in line for about 45 minutes before we got into the Hoh Rain Forest entry to the park.

Everything in the Hoh Rain Forest is green, very very green and so much is covered with moss.

 

After close to an hour driving around the full visitor center parking lot and waiting for someone to leave we found a parking spot and hiked the "Hall of Mosses Trail". It was strange and beautiful to see all the trees and bushes just completely covered with moss.

North Cascades National Park

 From Glacier we headed west again for an entire day. We spent the night in a cool little town Winthrop Washington. The next day we visited North Cascades National Park. The scenery is amazing driving through the park, even the drive to get to the park is pretty amazing. We planned to do several short hikes but it was the weekend and every trailhead parking lot was full with cars parked along the road.

 

The drive getting to the park was very scenic, this is looking back as we head up into the mountains.

Ross Lake.

Ross Dam.

The view from the Diablo Lake overlook.

 

Several photos from the Gorge Overlook Trail. This is from the bridge looking up Gorge Creek.

You can see it was foggy at times.

The entire drive through the park was beautiful, especially topdown on a nice day.

Glacier National Park

 From  West Yellowstone we went north and west to spend a day at Glacier National Park. We came in the east entrance to Going-To-The-Sun road so we didn't need a timed ticket, those were only if you came in from the west. We also skipped the Many Glacier part of the park since the roads in that area were under construction  and only the shuttles were allowed in.

The scenery is amazing before you even get into the park.

Looking into the park from the east, St Mary Lake.

Looking for wildlife. We took a few short hikes looking for moose but didn't find any.

You notice these are all scenery photos and nothing of the road/cars, there was a lot of traffic and all lots were full.

No place to park at Logan Pass visitor center so we just drove by. We were leaving enough time to make the hike up to Avalanche Lake but when we got to the trail head the parking lot was full and cars were park on both sides of the road for quite a ways before and after the parking lot. I found out later that specific hike is now the most crowed hike in America. The day turned into a beautiful, slow cruise through the park looking at the amazing scenery.
This was probably the 10th time we drove over the continental divide on this trip, starting in Colorado then north through multiple states and parks.

 

more Yellowstone.

 

As close to a family portrait as I could get.

It's hard to tell from this photo but that black lump in the middle is a grizzly bear. My camera lens wasn't enough to get a good photo but the guy next to me let me look through his spotting scope so we were sure what we were looking at even if I couldn't tell through my camera.
 

Pronghorn just standing as always.

Time for the after lunch nap.

When you have all day to wait for wildlife you can get the perfect pose, when you're just driving through the park with your spouse who is ready for lunch you get "snapshots" of whatever they are doing, in this case 4 pronghorns showing me their best sides.

 

A herd of elk near the town in the northwest corner of the park. This pose is actually the most common face I remember from photographing my son while he was growing up and didn't want me photographing him.

I really wanted this owl to turn around so I could get the face, they have the most amazing eyes. However it refused to move and I was stopped in the middle of the road holding up traffic so this was the best I could get.

Yellowstone National Park

 This was our third trip to Yellowstone so we skipped most of the geysers/hot springs/waterfalls and spent most of our time looking for wildlife.

In the past we've come in the east, the west, and the northeast entrances so this time we came up from Grand Teton through the south entrance.

 

So maybe still a few waterfalls.

Elk laying in the grass along the river near the West Yellowstone entrance.

 

Along the road through the Lamar Valley we found this mother black bear with 2 or 3 cubs.

She was scratching one side, then the other, then her head while her cubs played in the tree.

It's hard to tell from a photo but at this point was sitting on the rock and wiggling around scratching her bottom.

While she relaxed her cubs were having fun climbing up and down this tree.