Any ideas for a seven day journey to Olympic and the Oregon coast in mid Sept. Stan

Hiking and beachcombing come to mind.

How about a little information on what you like to do?

Neah Bay with its museum and some locally smoked salmon, and also a hike to Cape Flattery.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/mksfca...7622991196341/

For starters, stay inside the park. It's HUGE. I would suggest splitting between two locations: Lake Crescent Lodge and Lake Quinault Lodge. From those two, you can reach most of the park. The highlight of the park for me are the trails in the Hoh Rain Forest - truley magical. http://www.nps.gov/olym/planyourvisi...ng-the-hoh.htm

Not sure if you are flying or not. If you are, then consider flying into Seattle and starting at Lake Crescent for 2 nights. From there, move to Lake Quinault foir 2 nights, and then head to the Oregon Coast (Seaside and Cannon Beach are both nice possibilites) for your last few days before flying home from Portland.

National Park lodges need to be booked as early as possible - even before plane tickets.

Coastal towns have many, many hotels, B&Bs, apartments, etc. - so that accomodation is not quite as urgent to book early (though if you find something perfect, why not?).

The additional cost to do this trip as an open jaw flight is minimal and makes for the best use of your valuable time.

Kalaloch Lodge is what we recommend. It is on the Pacific Ocean. They have a decent restaurant there and some rooms and some cabins. If you luck out, you'll have a lovely sunset. Though the Pacific NW has lots of gray skies.

We drove the Oregon coast last September and it was spectacular! There are so many state parks and scenic areas to visit, the hardest part of the trip was deciding which ones to stop at. Stop at Canon Beach for sure and walk down to the main enormous rocks where they have park rangers to help you identify the sea life living around the rocks. If you like lighthouses, stop by Yaquina Lighthouse and Heceta Head Lighthouse. Cape Foulweather will provide some excellent photography.

http://discoverthewest.blogspot.com/...ast-north.html

http://discoverthewest.blogspot.com/...ast-south.html