Olympic: Hoh Rain Forest

Olympic is a tough park to see.  It’s HUGE but most of it in the interior, meaning you have to drive 20-30 miles in to get to trails, visitor centers etc.  Also, the trails all seem to be either really long backpacks – across the middle where there is only wilderness – or short 1 & 2 mile nature trails.  As a result we are doing a lot of “car hiking”.  The good news though it that mom can come!

I got up and and was taking my time getting ready and noticed that I hadn’t seen or heard from Mom and Dad.  Finally about 9:30 I made my way over to see what what going on – turns out Mom had some computer issues and they were up most of the night trying in vain to fix it! They were packing their stuff to go, it seriously reminded me of what Mr. & Mrs. Howell must have packed for their 3-hour tour! We hauled several big bags of stuff to the car and headed out.  It wasn’t long until we realized that we’d forgotten the map.  All that stuff and we still didn’t have what we needed!  Oh well, they had another map at the visitor center. 

The rainforest is pretty cool!  Big trees, lots of ferns and moss growing on everything! It was very dry though, I expected it to be wet and foggy.  It was a bright sunny and hot day and I’m guessing that has been the weather pattern for awhile. 

We had a nice picnic on an moss covered picnic table. I found a slug on the path to the picnic area took a great picture and then we discovered he was dead.  :-(  As my dad points out, dead animals are easier to photograph, they don’t move as fast!

After lunch we all headed off down the Spruce Trail – 1.25 miles, mostly flat.  It was a nice walk through the moss covered forest.  After that Dad and I walked the Hall of Mosses trail – this one was only .75 miles and it had some uphill, but not much. 

Having done everything there is to do at the Hoh Rainforest Visitor center we headed back down the road.  There were 2 little gift shops along the road and we stopped at one of them – Dad got new hiking clothes and I got some t-shirts. 

We got back to the campground early which was good because Dad could try and fix Mom’s computer and Mom and I worked on making meatloaf. 

After dinner I headed out by myself to go back to Rialto Beach to catch the sunset.  It was nice to do something by myself! :-)  There was less fog tonight and the sunset was a lot better!  I walked around a bit on the rocks and the driftwood and took pictures of the sunset until my battery was almost dead. 

Olympic: Hoh Rain Forest