Fairholme Campground is at the west end of Lake Crescent, located in the northern area of Olympic National Park. Now dogs are not usually allowed in national parks, but some campgrounds located along the outskirts do allow dogs, and this was one of them.
It is an incredibly popular campground and doesn’t accept reservations – so it’s a risk going out there. My husband’s parents, retired and trailer owners themselves, went mid-week and saved us a spot. Otherwise there’s no way we would have gotten one going on a Friday evening as we did.
The campsite itself is pretty cramped with sites right next to each other – some of the sites have views of Lake Crescent (ours did not). It’s a fine campground to use as a home base while you explore the Olympic National Park. There quite a few great hikes in the area that are dog-friendly, too. Here Grizzly poses with our copy of the Olympic Mountains Trail Guide:
And looks through our copy of Best Hikes with Dogs – Western Washington:
Unfortunately, we were not able to put to use either book as my husband was having some serious back problems and was not able to do much hiking. We did take about a 3 mile walk along a perfectly flat, paved trail that was nice but not super exciting. Nothing you wouldn’t get from one of the parks in Seattle.
The exciting thing was visiting the salmon run view point. The salmon were swimming upstream to lay their eggs and it was really fun watching them work their slippery little bodies upstream (more about this here). Here’s a little video I shot on my phone from a viewpoint:
And a photo I snapped of my husband and his parents:
In another area on the same stream we lucked out and saw a few river otters hanging out – they took off when they saw us but I managed to get a photo of them as they were leaving:
It was really the highlight of the trip seeing the salmon and otters and the dogs had no interest in either of them so there weren’t any issues there. If you can manage to secure a spot at Fairholme Campground it’s definitely worth a visit! Sequim is not far from there, either, so adding a stop during July to visit the lavender farms is another great option.
aussiedoodleadventures.com 