Rainforests

2018-09-14
Olympic National Park, WA

"This does feel rainforest-y."

"Because we're in a forest and it's raining?"

After living in your car for a couple weeks, adding another person is a lot like getting a roommate. Either way you have to clean out the spare room (aka passenger seat) and find places for all the junk you used to keep there. However, I'm definitely looking forward to having a navigator for this stretch.

This is the half-way point on the trip, and taking a moment to look back, I note that I've been in 13 states so far. I've hiked seven National Parks, one National Monument, one National Memorial, and one National Historic Site. I've driven through three National Grasslands (I didn't know that we even had these) and at least six National Forests. I've hiked over 70 miles, climbed over 9000 feet (that's like 16 Washington Monuments, and although Washington and monuments are on this trip, the Washington Monument itself is not), and burned over 10,000 calories. Looking forward I'd like to hit six more parks if time permits.

Today it was time to tackle Olympic National Park. That was about a three hour drive from the Seattle airport where we holed up last night. It's definitely the biggest city I've been in so far and I couldn't wait to put it in the rear view mirror. The terrain changed to trees fairly quickly though; I know the city is pretty big but when it ended, it did so abruptly at least in the westerly direction we were heading. Once we got to the park, there were a few places to stop for pictures of course.

The two favored areas at Olympic are Hurricane Hill and Hoh rainforest. The former is closed for goat relocation (guess they're movin' on up!) and the latter for road replacement. We opted to visit the Sol Duc falls, which is considered to be a rainforest area. And we weren't disappointed; we had plenty of both rain and forest when we got there. It was a relatively short 2.5 mile hike, and the falls were unusual although not particularly easy to photograph.

Olympic is very, very green and lush. Layers of green compliment each other in one place and unabashedly vie for your attention in other spots. It is the most vibrant place I've been in the US, and hard to describe.

On the way back we saw a sign for the "Ancient Grove" and had to stop and wander around. We really couldn't tell the Ents from the trees! It was a 1 mile stroll around some huge old trees. Damp and lush are the words that describe this area; it seems like everything is sprouting ferns and moss.

As we continued to work our way back towards Port Angeles we stopped by Marymere Falls. It's about a 2.5 mile hike round trip to see the falls, which are decently tall but not running very full this time of year.

Because the actual hike was so short, we headed off on a side trail for the backcountry. We didn't really want to get there of course, but we walked out a mile or so such that we got a full 4.5 mile distance on this hike. At some point in the past they turned a log that had fallen over the creek into a cool bridge by flattening the top and adding a railing on one side. It was probably an 80 foot span.

One final note for the day: you can pretty much always get good seafood in a town with "Port" in the name.

Hiking distance: 8 miles