FORKS, WA

We’ve spent three days in Forks, WA exploring the Northwest portion of Olympia National Park.  Hip, hip hooray, the sun is shining.  It was wonderful. There wasn’t a drop of rain all day today.  So what did we do?  We went to the Hoh Rain Forest!!!!  The forest is located on the moist, west side of Olympic National Park, 30 miles from the coast.  This temperate rain forest receives 140 inches of rainfall annually.  Some of the world’s largest trees grow here.  Western red cedar and western hemlock can tower up to 200 feet above the ground, while some Sitka spruce and Douglas firs can reach 300 feet.  Ferns are like feathers from the forest floor and mosses shroud the trees, covering the trunks in fuzzy green.  The air is heavy with moisture and sounds are muffled.  Bare earth is not visible beneath the countless plant species that compete for space and nutrients.  The Hall of Mosses is the trail we hiked, which is the one we walked with our daughters in 1983.

The first stop on our sight-seeing tour the next day was the Cape Flattery Trail which was about 42 miles from Forks.  We drove by lots of trees, and areas that had been clear cut.  In some spots we saw the ocean and a few times we saw large ships on the horizon.  They could be cruise ships and/or cargo ships.  We also saw many small boats by the shore and many on the road heading back home since the weekend is over.  Cape Flattery is the most northwestern point in the lower United States and is part of the Makah Tribe’s property.  The trail is about a 30 minute walk across a combination of cedar boardwalk, ‘slices’ of trees used as stepping-stones, and groomed earth; which today was muddy in many places and irregular.  The trail takes you up and down and at times you needed a light jacket and other times you were quite warm from the exertion.  At the end of the ¾ mile hike was a gorgeous view of waves crashing against rocky shores and of Tatoosh Island, which is a former Makah fishing and whaling camp and more recently a Coast Guard station.  The waves also crashed into caves at the base of where you stood for the view.

Our next stop was Rialto Beach, only 12 miles from Forks.  This is the nicest beach we have ever seen.  It was quite windy, so Judy had to put on her winter jacket, and then she enjoyed the walk on the path to this gorgeous beach.  You had to walk around, or climb over driftwood and then you saw the entire beach was lined with amazing amounts of driftwood.  The sand is black from decomposed volcanic rocks and there are many rounded river rocks by the driftwood.  Some of the trees are six feet in diameter and many are very long. The waves are quite large and are wonderful to listen to and watch.

Another cloudy day today as we drove to Sol Duc Hot Springs National Park. We headed to Sol Duc Falls and hiked a gorgeous trail to an absolutely beautiful waterfall.  This .8-mile hike through the woods was the nicest we’ve taken this trip.  The gravel and dirt trail has bridges over creeks and an occasional wooden bench where you can stop to admire the ferns, salmonberry and mosses covering the forest floor.  At the end where the falls is was like frosting on the cake!  Again, we needed warm jackets, but that’s okay!  We did see the sun for a short while.