Make the Olympic Peninsula your Next Vacation Destination

Looking for an exotic summer destination? One of the best kept travel secrets remains the incredible value that you will find on the Olympic Peninsula. Rocky beaches, magnificent rain forests, organic farm stands and lavender fields framed by snow-capped mountain peaks. Dozens of priceless experiences that cost little or nothing to enjoy!

First, there's the Olympic National Park -- just $15 for a one-week family pass is your ticket to some of the most pristine and unspoiled wilderness on the continent. The Olympic National Park is a World Heritage Site and an International Biosphere Reserve. With 37 peaks well above 7000-feet, the Olympic Mountains are breathtakingly beautiful, rugged and remote. They remain isolated from development with not a single ski resort to mar spectacular views of the wilderness.

The Olympic National Park is so vast that our guests often remark how surprised they were to have trails and scenic overlooks all to themselves even in the middle of summer! We know all the best trails from secluded rain forest waterfalls to high mountain meadows full of purple lupine. We'll even point out hidden beaches where you can spot gray whales in the kelp beds within a few hundred feet of shore.

Or you can explore the nearby Dungeness Spit and National Wildlife Refuge for a mere $3.00 for your entire group (an all-day entrance fee). If you want to splurge, for just $125 per person we'll set up our registered guests with a memorable Kayak tour out to the historic New Dungeness Lighthouse -- the package includes all your gear and a professional guide plus a tasty box lunch. It's the only way to see some of the Elephant Seal breeding grounds that are off-limits to visitors on foot.

If birds are your thing, the Protection Island Cruise is an amazing experience. Approximately 70-percent of the nesting sea bird population of Puget Sound and the Straits of Juan de Fuca hatch their young on the island. The island is perhaps better known for one of the largest nesting colonies of Rhinoceros Auklets in the world and one of the last two nesting colonies of Tufted Puffins in the Puget Sound area. In addition to the largest nesting colony of glaucous-winged gulls in Washington, nearly 1,000 harbor seals depend upon the island for a pupping and rest area.

If you're a history buff, there's no charge to explore nearby Port Townsend, a National Historic District that's a short and scenic 30-minutes by car. Once larger than Seattle, Port Townsend boasts turreted mansions built by the timber barons and a bustling waterfront that pre-dates the Civil War.

A pleasant, absolutely free spot for a romantic afternoon picnic can be found in postcard-perfect Port Gamble -- a charming village frozen in time in the 1860's. The streets are bordered by picket fences and its New England style church is one of the most photographed buildings in the state and a popular place for fairytale weddings.

Bring your bikes and pedal for free on the Olympic Discovery Trail that winds its way more through more than 30 miles of picturesque farms, across old wooden bridges and along a scenic coastline from Port Townsend to Port Angeles. Along the way, the Dungeness Railroad Bridge Park is a great place to spot Bald Eagles hunting for salmon in the icy Dungeness River.

Unless you've been sequestered on a different planet, you've no doubt heard of Forks, the home of vampires and werewolves made famous in the Twilight series of books and movies. Forks is an easy 45-minute drive from the Lodge and you can pick up a self-guided Twilight Tour map at the local Visitor Center. While the rain pelts Forks with more than 90-inches of rain each year, you'll be happy to return to sunny Sequim which receives fewer than 16-inches of rain per year making it the driest place in Western Washington.

Sequim's location in the "rain shadow" of the Olympic Mountains is the main reason that it has become the Lavender Capital of North America. It doesn't cost a thing to tour dozens of Lavender farms. Follow our recommended driving loop to snap the best photos of the lavender fields with snow-capped peaks in the distance. For just a few dollars, you can pick an armful of fresh lavender or a bucket full of fresh strawberries, raspberries and blueberries all summer long at nearby U-pick farms that dot the Sequim countryside.

With so much to see and do, book now for a long weekend getaway in a luxury fireplace suite in the Main Lodge (adults only) or reserve one of our fully equipped, kid-friendly private cottages for your family's summer vacation.

Your Travel Guide at Lost Mountain Lodge

Visit the Olympics after the Games

It's sunny and 52-degrees this morning with cloudless blue skies -- so clear that you can see Whistler Mountain, the site of the 2010 Winter Olympics -- shimmering in the distance to the north across the deep blue Straits of Juan de Fuca.

If you're intrigued by the news coverage on our corner of the world and are possibly contemplating the Pacific Northwest as your next vacation destination, you don't want to miss the spectacular Olympics that host visitors from around the world every day of the year -- the Olympic Mountains, the Olympic National Park and the Olympic Peninsula.

The Olympic National Park is a World Heritage Site and an International Biosphere Reserve. With 37 peaks well above 7000-feet, the Olympic Mountains are breathtakingly beautiful, rugged and remote. They remain isolated from development with not a single ski resort to mar pristine views of the wilderness.

Be sure to check out our December 2009 Blog below where we provide Insider Tips on the Olympic Explorer Loop that will take you from the rain forest and waterfall trails here on the Olympic Peninsula, to the charming city of Victoria B.C., followed by a magnificent ferry crossing to Horseshoe Bay and finally up the Sea-to-Sky Highway to Whistler and Garibaldi Provincial Park.

Of course, it is inspiring to watch the 2010 Winter Olympics. Congratulations to all the athletes and their families for the years of sacrifice, dedication and hard work that have led to their Olympic moments.

This year come to the amazing Olympic Peninsula and Olympic National Park and make some Olympic memories of your own to treasure for a lifetime.

Your Travel Guide at
Lost Mountain Lodge

The Olympic Explorer Loop to 2010 Olympics

Very soon the TV news crews will be focused on the 2010 Winter Olympics in Whistler, British Columbia. People from around the world will decide that the Pacific Northwest with its rocky slopes, soaring pines and picturesque coastline is a place worth exploring.

What you may not know is that on a clear day you can actually see the peaks of Garibaldi and Whistler-Blackcomb shimmering in the distance from a ridge high in the Olympic Mountains in Washington State. Perhaps it’s prophetic that Mount Olympus in Washington State was named after the home of the gods in Greece. On July 4, 1778, British explorer John Meares gave the mountain its present name—Olympus—because he believed it to be the most heavenly and tallest of all the mountains they had seen on their long voyage up the Pacific Coast. The Olympic Mountains actually have 37 peaks over 7000-ft. and while Mount Olympus is the tallest at 7,965-feet -- it seems much higher because you can actually view the mountain from sea level.

Beginning in 776 BC, the Olympic Games were held in Olympia, a village approximately 500km southwest of Mount Olympus, located in the Pindars, the highest mountain range in Greece in a region known as Thessaly. The Games were held there every four years for the next 12 centuries.

So perhaps the fact that the 2010 Winter Olympics are once again in the shadow of a mountain called Mount Olympus -- in a state whose capital city is called Olympia -- is poetic. In fact, Whistler-Blackcomb is less than 220 miles from the Lost Mountain Lodge where we write this Blog, so in fact, the 2010 Games are closer to “our” Mount Olympus than they were to the original Mount Olympus in Greece.

When you bookmark Whistler or Vancouver, B.C. as your next winter or summer vacation destination, the best kept secret is our Olympic Explorer Loop. This is a scenic route that will take you from the primeval rain forests on the west side of the Olympic National Park where you will pass through the misty town of Forks -- home to the Twilight series vampires -- to the old British fur trading outpost of Victoria, B.C. where the Olympic Torch began its 28,000 mile (45,000 km) odyssey on October 30, 2009.

Rather than waiting in a long line of cars at the border crossing on Interstate 5 north of Bellingham, you’ll venture “up island” to Nanaimo -- where Captain Cook once traded beaver fur pelts with native tribes. There you’ll board a ferry and cross the Straits of Georgia to Horseshoe Bay, bypassing all that tangled traffic in downtown Vancouver.

From there it’s a magnificent drive along the sparkling shores of Howe Sound all the way to Squamish where the road turns east and begins its climb past Garibaldi Park to Whistler-Blackcomb.

I skied the slopes at Whistler in 1976 -- long before there was a Blackcomb and when there was no Whistler Village or boutique hotels or 5-star restaurants. There was one gondola ride to get on the mountain and an amazing 7-mile run at the end of the day to get off the mountain through the "back side" wilderness. We stayed in rustic cabins on Alta Lake and made a big pot of homemade chili. Nightlife consisted of a cutthroat game of Scrabble or Spades.

Those news crews and athletes will find a more cosmopolitan experience in Whistler, but our Olympic Explorer Loop will help you discover places that thankfully are still undeveloped and pristine including the Olympic National Park, a World Heritage Site. For more information, see our earlier December 3, 2009 Blog regarding the World Heritage Site and UNESCO Biosphere Reserve distinctions bestowed upon the Olympic National Park -- a destination that should not be missed when traveling to Vancouver or Whistler, B.C.


Your Travel Guide at
Lost Mountain Lodge