Becka Makes It to the Pacific Ocean

Day 2 of my Pacific Northwest Journey was definitely a success. I woke up refreshed and headed west a few hours to my final destination. The drive there was almost interesting, I passed an area where you could view Mount St. Helen's, here's what's left of it (it lost about 1,000 vertical feet when it exploded).

Things really started to get entertaining when I finally made it to the Olympic National Forest. Ohmyfreakingheck! It was absolutely gorgeous! My first stop was the Quinault Rain forest. This portion of the peninsula is part Indian Reservation, part National Forest, all awesome!

Here I am, in the first of a set of pictures I'll call "Becka Poses With Big Trees." This is a Douglas Fir, it's like 400 years old, and epically tall.

The further I hiked through the rain forest, the better it got. There's something green growing on everything! The picture below shows exactly how nurse logs promote forest growth. Awesome, right?

There was moss hanging from everything, the trees were huge...I was in heaven. There were also cute signs like this.

I also found the largest Sitka Spruce (it has 922 AFA points, and is 191 feet tall, quite the tree).

After the dazzling day in the rain forest, I set off to spend the night in a real camp ground, and found the most amazing camp site ever! It was in Kalaloch on a bluff overlooking the ocean, and it was everything I dreamed it would be. I spent a couple hours just wandering along the beach, trying to find sand dollars (I found two), and putting my feet in the ocean (apparently I don't understand exactly how waves work, because I ended up wet up to my knees, and freezing cold).

As I gazed at the powerful surf there I had absolutely no desire to try and kayak there, it was freaking intense. There was really cool drift logs on the beach (entire trees, the same trees I had been oogling in the forest had been floated down the rivers, into the ocean, and back up on the beach), and a river. I went to bed with the best view ever.

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