Day 3: Rain Forest Shenanigans

On the 3rd day of my Pacific Northwest Adventure I went to the Hoh Rain forest. I know I said the Quinault Rain forest was everything I dreamed it would be, but the Hoh was more than I could ever dream was possible. I tend to use the word awesome excessively, but not here. Here the term for everything is "Friggin' Magnificent!"

First off, I found a Big Cedar (that's what the sign called it) that I could stand inside. Friggin' Magnificent.

Then I got to hike around the rain forest for like 7 hours. Plus, it was 311 Day. This was also the day I exemplified my super adult-like responsibility and called Mom on a pay phone because I didn't have any cell phone service, and I knew she would worry. Yeah me.

Again, the green here was more than I could handle. I was on sensory overload. There was so much to see and hear and touch and smell. I suppose I could have licked things, just to add to the stimulation,but that seemed dangerous. I learned cool things about the plants there, the epiphytes (plants that grow on other plants) don't damage their host plants here because they can get enough water and nutrients out of the atmosphere. There are club mosses and licorice ferns hanging from all the trees here. Friggin' Magnificent!

There were also giant stumps that were big enough for me to stand in (an hollowed out, so I could literally stand in them).
I also learned about the importance of having deep roots. There's so much rain in the Hoh valley (like 150 inches a year (that's more than 12 feet)) that the trees don't need to grow deep roots to gain the water and nutrients they need (this is not true of the trees you'll find in Utah). Unfortunately, as the trees grow to be over 200 feet tall, their root system becomes too inadequate to hold the trees upright during windstorms, thus there are major blow downs during winter storms. This has very clear family-type analogies to me: I can't blow over that easily because I have a freaking wonderful family that keeps me well grounded and provides stability during storms.
The only disappointment here was that I couldn't find any fairies having dance parties on the shelf fungi (its a reference to "Ferngully." If you haven't seen it, go watch it immediately, then you'll understand my preoccupation with rain forests, it started when I was like 6).
There was a little bit of danger to be had during this trip. There were warning signs all over the place about elk charging visitors because they got too close. Well, I didn't need any warning. I'd already been gored once by an elk. I suppose the scariest part of the threat here was that the Olympic Peninsula has its own subspecies of elk- Roosevelt Elk. I kept my eyes peeled for these creatures, sure that they were probably stalking me and trying to figure out how best to gore me. Luckily, I only found signs that they had been there before me, like the foot prints and scat pictured below (that's right, I'm posting pictures of poo on my blog).

It was actually kind of scary to me though. There was some random thumping going on, and the only thing I could make of it was that Thumper was around somewhere (then I remembered that Thumper was a rabbit from "Bambi" and real rabbits probably didn't have the same tick). Sometimes I stopped and just listened, then my stomach would rumble a little bit and I hoped that it wouldn't be interpretted as bugling, because I really didn't want to duel with a bull elk at the end of the rut.

One of the great things about rain forest hiking is that its pretty low elevation. I hiked 12 miles in 5 hours and only gained about 250 feet of elevation. And I was in heaven. The Hoh River is pretty cool. It looks a little desolate because everything is grey, but the grey stuff is cool because its "glacial flour" which I imagine would make about the worst bread ever.

I slept really well that night, right next to the Hoh River (and pretty close the the Hoh Road, which made me giggle, because I have the sense of humor of a 12 year old boy). Friggin' Magnificent!

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