Spruce Railroad Trail, Sol Duc Falls — Wednesday, Jul. 30, 2025

Day two of our family adventure in the Olympics. We started at the Spruce Railroad trail in the morning and walked out as far as the Devil's punchbowl. The majority of the trail is nice and flat and wide, and made for easy walking.

The short spur trail to the punchbowl was much more challenging, with roots and rocks, and pretty eroded in places. It was nothing too tricky compared to many of the trails in WA, but for my family visiting from the East Coast it proved to be a challenge. My mom fell in one of the eroded sections but thankfully was ok. If I had realized what the trail conditions would be, I would have recommended she wait for us on the main trail or honestly skipped this one altogether. The lake was beautiful but crowded. We checked out the tunnel after returning to the main trail, which was really fun. Just a reminder to please walk your bikes through the tunnel, a cyclist ran into my sister after losing control of his bike.

Afterwards, we headed out to Sol Duc falls. Parking was hard to find and we ended up parking quite a ways down the road. The trail to the falls is steep in some places, and rocky and rooty. My mom found it tricky in spots and we had to assist her in some places. The falls were beautiful but understandably crowded so we didn't spend a lot of time there. My partner and I walked back to grab the car and when we arrived back in the parking lot we were lucky enough to see some of the park's mule team coming out of the trail after a day of trail work. What a treat! The bathrooms at the trailhead proved to be in pretty rough condition so we drove a short ways down the road to the campground for a rest stop before heading back to Port Angeles for the night.

We got ready for the start of this year's Hike-a-Thon by wearing last year's T-shirts, and of course we brought along Miles the Marmot! #HikeaThon