August 11th and 12th. The plan today was to go to Beach 4 in Klaloch and Ruby Beach, then make a quick visit to the Hoh Rainforest before going to our next motel, the Olympic Suites in Forks. We would use Forks as our base for an excursion to Rialto Beach in LaPush the next day. Initially, I didn't plan on going to Beach 4, but fortunately had read that it had great tide pools in a travel guide. Our first stop of the day at Beach 4 was amazing (the Lake Quinault Lodge was soon forgotten but not forgivin)! This was my third "I can't believe this" experience of the trip. The first two being Hurricane Ridge and the giant trees of the Quinault Rainforest. There were tidal pools everywhere and each held anemones, starfish, hermit crabs, tunicates, barnacles, different kinds of shellfish--it was amazing. 
We spent a lot of time here and if I had to do it all over again would have stayed longer, it was by far the most interesting of the beaches we visited over the next couple of days. Next up, Ruby Beach was okay, but paled in contrast to Beach 4 in Klaloch. We kept looking for ruby-colored beach pebbles but were not rewarded for the effort.
I think you have to wait for evening to see a ruby-sunset or whatever. Unfortunately, we didn't stay long into the evening on any of the beaches. Next, after a short, quick hike through the Hoh Rainforest we started towards Forks. The Hoh was great, but not exceptionally different than the Quinault Rainforest, and having hiked through Quinault enough this didn't really hold our interest. Anyway, on the way to Forks we passed by the Hoh River which had most blue-green colored water of such exceptional clarity that I had ever seen. We didn't have any planned escursion on the Hoh River, but looking back I wish we had a least stopped to explore this river and take some pictures. I thought Forks was a nice little town. It had a supermarket where we bought food and the Olympic Suites was better than I had hoped for. A rather secluded location; a nice suite with a complete kitchen and laundary facility and a river we could climb down to and have all to our own. However, other than the grocery store, the town seriously lacked any outlets to occupy our time.
On our second day we visited Rialto Beach. There were some impressive sea stacks but not much in the way of tidal pools here. At one point, we almost got stranded as the tide was coming in fast and we had to huury to get across a channel before it was too late. It is rather disarming to stand as the tide is coming in and look out to sea and realize that there is a lot of water out there and it can be dangerous to wander around and loose track of the time and tide. There are lot of warnings about this especially when you hike across where a river or creek cuts the shoreline. These inlets may look shallow and no big deal at low tide, but can be impassable at high tide. It was at this point that we all started getting weary of hikes and headed back to Forks to try to find other options. There weren't any. At one time there used to be an Art Trek that presumably lead around to various local art galleries. However, there only seemed to be one art gallery left in Forks that featured local dabblers in arts and crafts (but mostly crafts), but we weren't tempted to purchase anything. We briefly amused ourselves walking through an odd festival/flea market in a local park. Again, nothing tempted us. In fact it was a little depressing, so we went back to the hotel to chill the rest of the day.
On our second day we visited Rialto Beach. There were some impressive sea stacks but not much in the way of tidal pools here. At one point, we almost got stranded as the tide was coming in fast and we had to huury to get across a channel before it was too late. It is rather disarming to stand as the tide is coming in and look out to sea and realize that there is a lot of water out there and it can be dangerous to wander around and loose track of the time and tide. There are lot of warnings about this especially when you hike across where a river or creek cuts the shoreline. These inlets may look shallow and no big deal at low tide, but can be impassable at high tide. It was at this point that we all started getting weary of hikes and headed back to Forks to try to find other options. There weren't any. At one time there used to be an Art Trek that presumably lead around to various local art galleries. However, there only seemed to be one art gallery left in Forks that featured local dabblers in arts and crafts (but mostly crafts), but we weren't tempted to purchase anything. We briefly amused ourselves walking through an odd festival/flea market in a local park. Again, nothing tempted us. In fact it was a little depressing, so we went back to the hotel to chill the rest of the day. 
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