Photo: View from Scenic Beach State Park

This is a view across the Hood Canal toward the Olympic Peninsula and the Olympic Mountains. In winter and spring, if there isn't rain, there is usually fog, even on sunny days. On this early April day, the fog burned off by 10:00 a.m., so there was a beautiful vista. In the summer and fall months, the sky is usually clear and the air is crystal clear.

Scenic Beach State Park in Washington State along the Hood Canal offers views of a glacier-formed fjord and dramatic vistas of the Olympic Mountains inside Olympic National Park. Hood Canal was first called "Hood's Channel" by Captain Vancouver, its European discoverer, in 1792 after Lord Hood, a famous English Admiral of the day.

There are several long narrow valleys sculpted by the last ice age, or, in geological terms, "fjords," in North America, mainly in British Columbia and Alaska, but they are most associated with the Scandinavian coastlines.