“Hi Ho, Hi Ho. It’s off to Hoh we go…”
We headed first to the Hoh Rainforest, a different section
of Olympic National Park. Now you would
think when you get to a rainforest that it might rain. Just the opposite for us -- when we got to
the rainforest it stopped raining. We
would have hiked anyway, but it is nice to hike in dry weather. The trails highlight the unique aspects of a Pacific Northwest rainforest, most of which we’ve seen
already along this trip.
Here a dead log became a “nurse log,” then the log decayed,
leaving only the roots of the new trees. Rain forest undergrowth is often so
dense that tree seedlings can only start on a log.
This maple grove
is nothing like maple groves back east.
We next headed to Ruby
Beach. We loved the rock formation: the natural ones
and the man-made ones.
We even got to see a family of otters.
Then we went to Beach 4 (someone has to think of a cleverer
name for this beach).
Our campsite for the evening at Kalaloch is near another
beach. We can’t see the beach from our
site, but we can hear the ocean and we took a quick walk to it. Here it is.
Even though it is mid-July nighttime temperatures are still
in the 50s. We’ll see what temperatures
are as we leave the Olympic peninsula tomorrow.
