Olympic National Park: Lake Quinault And World Record Sitka Spruce

It's a big national park, including some isolated units, and, as I've observed, more diverse than any we have seen before. Our tour continued with a visit to Lake Quinault and the historic Lake Quinault Lodge, and then a drive and short hike to see the world's largest Sitka Spruce. We spent the night, October 14th, in Raymond. It was to be our last day in the park and our last in Washington.

View from from Kalalach campsite

Lake Quinault Lodge

They average 12 feet of rain a year here; but not this day, as Aragorn would say

Big room in the Lodge

The whole thing was built in a matter of weeks; by the same builder who later
did the Gallatin Gateway Lodge, site of one of my first meetings with the Montana
Committee for the Humanities, way back in 1996

Construction documentation

Outside, lake and grounds

Totem/rain gauge

Back inside, ceiling decor

More documentation: research on Bigfoot

Sign of the place: in a nearby general store, rain chains...

Or, ce n'est pas un sentier, as Magritte would say

One of the more interesting "tear drops" we have seen; we briefly owned one,
of plastic molded construction, back in the late 90s;  another proto-type that
did not pan out; we sold it after a few trips and soon bought another truck
camper, a Roamin' Chariot, built in Spokane, Washington (previously we had
briefly owned a Palamino; but I digress...)

Not the Big Tree, but an interestingly hollowed out spruce

Fine print; Vicki always reads this stuff while I am off trying
to find the right light, the right angle and frame...had I read
it we might have stayed to see all the Champion Trees of
the Valley, to complete our set; Champion Trees are a big
deal in the UK of GB, as we well know

The Big Sitka Spruce

View of Lake Quinault

Like most of the peninsula we've seen, it's remote and very sparsely populated;
here, a few cabins around the lake, a few farms; 12 feet of rain on average...

Olympic National Park: Ruby Beach And Kalalach

Our tour of the park continued, with stops at Ruby Beach, a Big Tree, and encampment at Kalalach.

At Ruby Beach, more beautiful coastal seascapes

Apart from the currents, the cold water, there are additional reasons not to swim from
these beaches 

Our camper up on the bluff

Driftwood house

There was a sign off the highway to a Big Tree, then a
gravel road, then a trail to a grove of many unidentified
Big Trees... 

At Kalalach

Pizza mushroom, just as in NZ; poisonous, presumably

Another broad beautiful beach

Oh yes, there was a sunset...

Olympic National Park: Hoh Valley

After our visit to Forks, we drove up the valley of the river Hoh. We had passed through Olympic NP some time around the turn of the century/millennium, perhaps in too much a hurry to get back to Missoula from a Western Directors' meeting in Point Reyes. Anyhow, we have memories of Olympic, mostly of the rain forest bit, but so far on this 2018 trip had not visited anything we remembered. We figured it was probably the Hoh Valley we visited back in 1999/2000. Hoh is indeed the place to go for the rain forest thing, low down and on the west side. Only thing was, it hadn't rained in some days, and the sunny, dry weather we have been carrying with us continued. I think they may have actually moved the fire danger gauge from "you've got to be kidding...this is a rain forest" to "highly improbable."

Our encampment in the Hoh campground

Original 1970 sign, hand-lettered by Vicki; we've carried it with us on many of our
US trips, but never much used it until now

Embarking on one of the several short hikes in the "rain" forest

In the Hall of Mosses (and lichens and epiphytes, etc.)

Although crisp, clear, and dry, it was a bit chilly

Successful nurse log

Big trees all around, mostly firs and Sitkas but also some huge
maples

Driving out the next morning, we were treated to a passing bull elk and friends