Olympic National Park, Washington

Fueled by our beer tasting brunch at the Bridge Port Microbrewery in Portland (where we filled our growler) we endured a 6-hour haul through driving rain to the west coast of Olympic National Park and the mighty Pacific Ocean. In so doing we completed our coast-to-coast journey through this great country, seeing some truly incredible sights, and here in the heart of the Northwest we found another. We immediately went down to the beach. It was twilight and the rain had eased but the clouds remained. We could hear the big surf rumbling in over the fine black sand and headed for it over a stack of massive driftwood logs – some at least as wide in diameter as we are tall. These massive logs, haphazardly arranged at the edge of the beach started us thinking about the perspective of this place. We began to feel very small, walking along an immense, flat beach with the roaring pacific swells on one side and the pile of monstrous logs on the other. The wet sand reflected the poor light from the sky perfectly and the low clouds completely obscured the horizon, so that shadows looked as solid as the shapes they mimicked. We felt like we had reached a limbo country, where the land ends and the sea turns into the sky. Joining us in this gloaming land were groups of three or four people, holding torches and digging in the sand. They drifted in and out of sight and at times all we could see were their torches. They were digging up clams with their lengths of pvc pipe – looking for the tell-tale bubbles as the sea ran back over the sand. Then the clouds dropped right down to the sand, enveloping us and completing the hallucination. We hurried back to the familiarity of our little room at the Kalaloch Lodge, over grotesque, bloated driftlogs, dripping with droplets from the clouds.

Kalaloch Beach

Olympic has three separate habitiat types to explore – the Pacific Ocean, temperate rain forest and mountains. The Olympic Mountains form the spine of a peninsula that was cut off from the rest of the continent by glaciers for a long period of time. Interestingly, this separation led to the “endemic 16,” a group of 16 wildflowers and animals that don't exist anywhere else. More recently, the peninsula has been inhabited for at least 12 thousand years, and local native Quinault Indians called the west coast Kalaloch, which translates to “land of plenty” in English. The Olympic Penninsula was first declared a National Forest in 1889, before our pal Teddy Roosevelt designated it as a National Monument in 1909, just as he was leaving office. This National Monument was almost named Elk National Monument, in honour of the sub-species of elk, called Roosevelt Elk, that are found only on the peninsula (their naming in turn obviously being carefully calculated to guarantee their protection). The National Monument was further protected as a national park by Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1938. In 1981 Olympic National Park was listed as a World Heritage Site and certain areas of the park were designated as “wilderness” in 1988. The designation “wilderness” is a protective overlay that Congress applies to selected public lands. Wilderness areas may not be logged, drilled or traveled by motorized transport or even bicycles. A big section of Olympic National Park was re-designated national forest (such designation would allow logging) during World War II to supply timber for the war effort.

Logs on Beach 3

Back at Kalaloch Lodge, buoyed by the assurance that the in-house restaurant “offers astonishing panoramic Pacific views and fine dining,” we settled in with a local pinot noir. After some fine local fish, we asked our friendly waiter for a cheese plate (not on the menu) with which to savour the last of our wine. He asked a lot of questions (all but “what is cheese”?), promised to ask the chef and returned with a plate of kraft singles. Fortunately, the chef had taken care to unwrap each one. This is a remote part of the world. In fact, it would probably be almost forgotten altogether if it wasn't for a recent pop culture phenomenon sourced from this region – See the upcoming blog on Pacific Northwest region for more on this.

Planning on visiting each of the eco-systems offered by the park, we set of next morning for a beach walk. It was a brilliant day, the horizon had re-appeared, the waves calmed and the place seemed a lot more earthly. As we walked a mature bald eagle left its perch on the forest edge and showed off his striking plumage with a lovely low swoop before taking another beach-side perch. Pretty soon, though, the waves started pushing us closer to the pile of drift logs massed under the beach-cliffs. The high-tide warnings that we had so optimistically swept away rang back to us as we started scrambling over the logs and noticing the odd outlier moving alarmingly in the small waves. We were forced to scramble up the cliffs and watch as the tide washed into the logs and tossed them around like twigs. In this land where everything is exaggerated, the sea is easily the most powerful force – forming the sandy cliffs, bringing the weather, playing with these massive wood slabs. It licked at the wood with soft tongues of thick foam that bely the danger of these multi-ton objects rolling and swaying at its whim. We were mesmerized by these bobbing monsters and the foam that they danced to. It was a thick, viscous foam – made from pulverized plankton, kelp, silt and wood – that reminded us of making chocolate mouse.

Foam on Kalaloch Beach

Our next eco-system was the rainforest. The Hoh Rainforest is one of the rare temperate rainforests remaining, and receives an inordinate amount of rainfall – 120 to 150 inches, or roughly 12 feet annually. This rain creates enormous trees, and Olympic National Park boasts possibly the largest Douglas Fir and Sitka Spruce in the world, as well as some really big Alaskan Yellow Cedar Trees and Regular Cedar Trees. Some of these trees are a thousand years old, and they look it. The forest looks like a Brothers Grim forest – huge trees, entirely adorned with green mosses and long beards of lichen, sometimes drooping six feet or more. The canopy completely blocks the sky, and mosses completely cover the ground, so that all light in the forest is green. It is such a fecund place, that some of the biggest trees have younger trees growing on their branches – as John Muir puts it, “like a parent holding its children in its arms.” If a tree has fallen and lets some sun reach the mosses at the forest floor, it causes the moss to steam. I imagine that the air is completely saturated, and so any additional moisture condenses into clouds. It is the wettest place in the USA, and again, it totally freaked us out.

Hoh Rainforest Trail

We walked along the Hoh River, and in some places on the river bank deciduous trees had managed to grow. Their autumn foliage displays and the gray-blue of the glacial river were literally our only relief from the green onslaught of the rainforest. At the end of this hike we took a tour of the campsite at Hoh Visitor Center and discovered a herd of Roosevelt Elk – alone without any campers to interrupt their delicate gardening. These guys were apparently very comfortable around a clean, green machine like the Prius, and we were allowed to watch them go about their business to our heart's content.

Big Cedar Tree

Stream in Hoh Rainforest

With only one more eco-system to explore, and Lish fast coming down with a cold that threatened to go all the way to pneumonia, we headed to Sol Doc Hot Springs Resort. This is a lodge within the park that exploits one of the two geothermal areas in the park. The legend told by the local Native American tribe to explain the hot springs is as follows: Long ago, two dragons inhabited the Sol Doc Valley and the Elwha Valley. Being perfectly happy in his own valley, neither dragon ventured beyond it, and so they were unaware of each other. Then one day both dragons traveled to the ridge dividing the two valleys and, upon discovering a rival so close, each flew into a rage and they waged a terrible war. Eventually, both were exhausted, and mutually agreed that they were evenly matched and neither could beat the other. They called a truce and each went back to their valleys, where they remain today, crying over their loss. The tears from this bawling form the hot springs at Sol Doc and Elwha.

Sol Duc Falls

The hot springs have been used by the Native Americans and Europeans alike for their medicinal powers, and we took to them with dedication often throughout our three days at Sol Doc. Between applications of the healing waters, we explored some of the magnificent trails through the forest to Sol Doc Falls and up into the higher country around Deer and Mink lakes. Being at lower elevation than Glacier National Park, the autumn colours are later at Olympic, and we were again treated to stunning displays on the open hillsides and around ponds and streams where there is enough light for the deciduous trees to grow. On our favourite route to the falls – called Lover's Lane – we started noticing the mushrooms and fungis bursting through the moss carpet or feeding off the giant trees, both fallen and standing. If you knew your botany, you would never be hungry in the forest.

Fungi in the forest

Unfortunately, throughout our luxurious three days at Sol Doc the Olympic Mountains remained primly clothed in low clouds and so kept us waiting for the experience of the third eco-system of this remarkable national park. For bureaucratic reasons we had to depart to Canada's fair shores with some haste, so were not able to wait for the emergence of the mighty Mount Olympus, named thus by the English sea captain John Meares when he sailed passed the coast. (Meares felt that surely this mountain was the resting place of the Greek Gods). For us this mountain would have to wait for another day.