Day 2: Ocean Shores to Neah Bay
The hazelnut-encrusted French toast at Ocean Crest Resort in Moclips is so good and rich I barely use the freshly zested orange butter. The restaurant sits high on a bluff, with 131 wooden stairs that drop through the trees down onto flat, wide-open Sunset Beach. We walk off breakfast but don't linger, as the Quinault Rain Forest awaits.

After an hour's drive we pause in the Quinault Mercantile store to sock away some sandwiches; the owner, fisherman and would-be retiree Chuck Coble, says he loves this neck of the woods more than the national park's Hoh Rain Forest because there, the best scenery comes only after long hikes. "Here," says Chuck, "it's 31 miles and you can see it all by car." Funnily enough, our waitress at Ocean Crest told us she prefers the Hoh for the exact same reason. Since we already have a hike planned for tomorrow, Susan and I are down with Chuck's perspective.

Sol Duc Hot Springs Resort (Eden Batki) [enlarge photo] MARCH 2007 ISSUE • Table of Contents • Dream Trips • Lighthouses of Croatia • Family Camps • Eat Like a Local: Chicago • Trips That Can Change Your Life: Adventure Biking • Road Trip: The Olympic Peninsula • 40 Best

"Have you seen the tree?" Chuck asks. No, but we're about to: The World's Largest Sitka Spruce--191 feet tall and just an inch shy of 59 feet around, with an enormous root system--is at the beginning of the Quinault Rain Forest loop drive. Then South Shore Road rambles past homes and farmland--Rainy Daze Farm, the Wild Ass Ranch--before resuming alongside the Quinault River.

At the 10.8 mile mark we cross the river and continue down North Shore Road, which winds and drops into a denser, lower-hanging canopy. We picnic in a meadow by the ranger station, toss our trash into a bear-proof bin, and proceed on foot along the Maple Glade Trail, a half-mile circuit of seemingly boundless forest with maples, mosses, hemlocks, spruces, and, as Susan dubs them, Jurassic Park ferns.

U.S. 101 returns us right to the coast, where we pause for gas, espresso, salmon jerky, and views of pounding surf. We later stop at a supermarket in the logging town of Forks, having gathered that the peninsula's most charming locales are short on services, while the towns with services lack charm.

Further up the highway, a series of four signs explains a bare patch in the usually dense state forest: CUT SOME TREES, TO HELP THE COUNTY, WE PLANT SOME MORE, FOR FUTURE BOUNTY. "Burma Shave!" Susan and I blurt out simultaneously, joining, no doubt, thousands before us.

Our destination for the night is Neah Bay, the northwesternmost point in the continental U.S. "You're at the end of the world," says the goateed desk clerk at the Cape Motel & RV Park, which doesn't aspire to be anything more than a place for fishing buddies to bunk down with a 4 A.M. wake-up call. The clerk mentions that some people in town like to say Neah Bay is actually the beginning of the world, but he tells them: "You haven't been very many places."

Lodging

Food