Olympic

Seattle is not far from Olympic National Park. It sits at the northwestern most corner of the lower forty eight states.

I got some tips about some crazy nice terrain in there, so I chose that as my next stop.

I wanted to check out the Hoh Rainforest, but it's on the opposite side of the wilderness from Seattle and, in order to preserve the natural state, no roads cross directly through the park. My choice was to either backtrack south to Olympia or take a northern route.

Since I didn't plan to head south for awhile, I knew if I took the north route, I'd have to drive back the same way I came. There was no way around backtracking, so I headed south to start a clockwise loop around the park.

I was pretty sure I'd have a hard time making it to Hoh before dark, so I planned to stay near Moclips at Pacific Beach State Park. Maybe it was just that it was foggy and cold there, but I'll go ahead and not recommend this stretch of Washington in case anyone is considering checking it out.

The closest inland towns of Aberdeen and Hoquiam are pretty bleak. Sitting directly at sea level, they had signs posted proclaiming they are "tsunami ready". The signs pointed which direction to run in case the big wave comes. Clearly a political reaction to the deadly 2004 tsunami, the town leadership chose to spend their energy on this "readiness" rather their clear economic troubles. Maybe the fancy new nuclear power plant down the road will help with that. Oh wait. They never finished building it.

I just stayed the night in the crowded campsite (really just a parking lot) on the foggy coast, then headed up into the Olympic first thing in the morning.

One thing that has really jumped out at me while driving in Washington is the extent of logging.

In the part of California I'm from, we don't really have patches of forest missing unless it is due to a wildfire or real estate development. We do, however, have large portions of land devoted to agriculture - long stretches of crops. It seems clear that in Washington (and maybe Oregon too), trees are the crops. The wood is their economy. Most hillsides have trees in varying age groups. A stretch of small Christmas sized trees, then some adolescents, then some that look almost natural except for the uniform size and placement. Some roads even have signs listing the cutting and planting history dating back to the turn of the last century. Maybe every thirty years or so, they cut the trees again and re-plant. As a result, there seem to be almost no natural old growth forests left. These state and national parks are protecting those trees from what seems like otherwise certain demise. I have started to appreciate the parks' role much more on this trip.

Even the parks are not always natural forest. The land, in some cases, was acquired sometime after logging had already occurred. But it's striking when you pass a national park entrance sign, you're likely to see an immediate change in the scenery.

These are the memorable parts of my couple days in Olympic:

Hoh Rainforest - There were some nice free primitive campgrounds along the Hoh River, but I opted this time for the national park campground at the end of the highway. It was $12, but the scenery throughout the campground was almost every bit as lush as the surrounding area. I think the name "rainforest" is stretching the word a bit though. It is very green indeed, with moss hanging from the enormous trees, but not the dripping, chirping, exotic display of natural diversity one might expect from the Amazon. A large river runs along the park area with giant white trunks of driftwood littering the shores - fallen trees from the mountain washed downstream bit by bit.

Crescent Lake and Quinault Lake - These were the lakes I saw up close, but really this part of the country is peppered with them. Beautiful calm blue lakes bordered by tall steep stands of tall green trees. This area was cut out by glaciers. The ice cut out deep, dramatic canyons and left behind all the lakes, sounds, rivers that surround Washington and British Columbia. Pick a lake, any lake, and it will likely be gorgeous. And I haven't seen much in the way of crowds at the lakes, presumably because they are so ubiquitous.

Glaciers - This was my first time ever laying eyes on a glacier. It wasn't as close as Shannon and Kathleen's experience in South America. They got to boat right by car-sized chunks falling into the ocean - but it still counts. I didn't realize that there were areas this far south that had snow and ice year round. All of the big mountain ranges (Rainier, Baker, Olympics, etc) all look like ski season is in full effect from far away. This is the middle of July, and it looks like a storm just came through this week.

Olympic Hot Springs - That one deserves its own post.