Hiking Olympic National Park - A 9 Year Old's First Backpack trip

Nothing like your first real camping trip.  This pic is of a popular hike in Olympic National Park in Washington State.  I have it on my web site in the gallery under Kids Being Kids and other pics of the park under Inspiring Places.  Olympic National Park has many great places to visit from the glaciers on Mt. Olympus rising nearly 8,000, to the Sol Duc Hot Springs to Hurricane Ridge where your view of the thousands of mountain peaks are visible in one place like nowhere else you’ve been.  My personal favorite, though, is the 3 mile hike from Lake Ozette, through the rain forest, to the Pacific Ocean.

After having gone there many times in my youth, I took my son there when he was just 9 yeas old.  It was his first rugged backpacking trip.  My thought was, if he could carry his own pack, he was ready.  About a mile in to the hike, he started unloading his gear on me.  Didn’t matter.  He was still ready.  (After all, turned out I was the one who forgot to bring fire starter. Didn’t matter.  We got a fire going.) We also saw countless animals close enough to touch, Indian petroglyphs and a beached hump back whale.

They’ve built the wooden boardwalk to keep people off the actual ground.  Rain Forests are very sensitive and vital to our world ecosystem.  This rain forest gets about 150 inches of rain per year.  It is so isolated, that it is home to many species that are not found anywhere else in the world including the Roosevelt Elk, named after President Teddy Roosevelt, who fell in love with the place and commissioned the park.

The best part of this trip, for me, however, was hearing my son Gavin tell the stories after we came back  He still recounts every thing we did on that trip, including stopping at an old diner for breakfast on our way home the last day.  He remembers building the tent on the beach, hearing the ocean waves, seeing the animals and loves to tease me about struggling with the fire.  Going back to a place you spent some time as a kid is fun.  Camping on the ocean next to a rain forest is very cool.  Getting quality time with your kid and building his memories that will last a life time – priceless.  Now that’s a great part of the journey.