Hoh Rainforest, Olympic National Park

 

August 19th, 2022

We woke up in Grayland to a rainy morning that Friday. The drizzle outside our cabin window was delightful. 

The jalapeño cheddar bread we had picked up the day before at the Cottage Bakery in Long Beach came in handy for a quick bite along with tea before getting on the road. Passing through towns like Aberdeen, Hoquiam and Ocean Shores we were back on 101. Northbound we headed along the coastline towards Olympic National Park. 

Olympic National Park lies along the Olympic Peninsula. This sprawling land gained the status of National Park in 1938. It is recognized by UNESCO as an international biosphere reserve. There is remarkable diversity in the ecosystems of this park. On the eastern side are drier forests. On the western side are rare temperate zone rainforests and pacific coastline. In addition, there are glaciated mountains in the center of the region, with many peaks, most prominent of which is Mount Olympus. There are subalpine forests and meadows in this region. The rainforests have dense groves of the Sitka Spruce trees, Douglas Firs, cedars and hemlocks. Moss coverings on these trees is another remarkable feature of these ecosystems. These rainforests extend close to the coastline. Wildlife in the area includes Roosevelt elk (a species larger and different from the Tule elk in Central Valley of California), black bears, cougars and marmots. Unfortunately we saw none of these that day.

Our adventures included a couple of hikes in the Hoh Rainforest and then at the Rialto Beach and Second Beach of the Quileute Indian Reservation. The Hoh rainforest is a world heritage site. We saw the Hoh river within the Hoh rainforest and later the Sol Duc river near La Push and on way to the beaches. The Rialto Beach was strewn with heaps of well rounded pebbles and stones of various sizes as well as logs of wood drifted from the Columbia River. 

The Second Beach called for a rather challenging 1.2 mile hike through the coniferous forest from the parking lot to the beach. Ferns and huckleberry,snow berry bushes added significantly to the vegetation along the trails underneath the tall conifers. Marine birds like pelicans and sea gulls were in larger numbers than people on the ocean front. Prominent sea stacks were part of the landscape for these beaches. It was hazy along the coast and the sun wasn’t visible at all. Luckily we didn’t encounter rain during the hikes. A total of 6.3 miles of hiking was logged in for the day. 

A pizza dinner in the town of Forks concluded our day before we settled into our hotel room.

Saree was a natural dyed cotton Mangalgiri with hand printed delicate design and appliqué work on borders. I had picked this saree more than a decade ago at a small store in Pune. The moss green color of the saree matched the moss covered rainforest where we hiked for most part of the day.