After dropping our parents to Sea-Tac airport, we decided to spent couple days in Olympic National Park.
Our plan was to spend a night at Shi-shi Beach and then explore the park's rainforest on the next day. As planned we took the ferry from Seattle downtown and reached Bainbridge Island around 1 PM. I had anticipated that we'd reach the island a little sooner.
From there we made our way back to the ranger station in Port Angels. We talked to a ranger, got our permits for the night to camp on the beach. The ranger also informed us not to park at the trailhead for the night. He told us to park 1/2 mile before the trailhead at someone's front yard to avoid having the car broken into. He told us that there will be a sign and a dropbox for us to put in $20 as a parking fee and laughed it off by saying that's the bribe. At the time, I didn't quite understand what he was saying.
From Port Angeles, to Neah Bay is quite a long drive and slow drive with all the twisty road along the coast. We stopped at The Museum at the Makah Culture and Research Center to get our Makah Recreation permit ($10) which is needed to park anywhere in the Makah reservation area. The direction to Shi-shi beach was clearly marked by the signs in the town. We reached the TH at around 6pm. Like the ranger said, it was clearly marked where to park for the overnight use.
After all this, we finally hit the trail. The trail itself was incredibly muddy in lots of places and most of the time unavoidable. After walking through all that for about 2 miles, we got to what looked like a dead end was a beach access trail - it was really steep and rope assisted. We didn't really need to use the ropes, but I can imagine on a wet day, those ropes would be really helpful.
Once on the beach, it was about 2 more miles to Petroleum Creek, where we camped. There were a few people already camping on the beach. I setup our camp and Aesha cooked dinner in the meanwhile. After dinner, she went directly to bed and I hung around enjoying the beach and warm fire.
All in all this was by far the most expensive camping I have ever done. It cost me $40 in total for permits plus parking. I've wanted to do stay here for quite some time, and now that is out of the way, I am probably not going to come all this way - not because it wasn't beautiful, but just because $40 was too much to spend for a camping night!