We visited the Tillamook Forest Center today. This had a large number of fires and by the 1940’s it was almost 400 square miles of black charred trees. They planted 72 million douglas spruce seedling. They were planted by volunteers, inmates, school children, girl and boy scout troops and many more. Now it is a 70 year old forest. It is temperate rain forest. They get an average of 120 inches of rain a year. During this drought year they have gotten 100 so far. Unfortunately a lot of fell at the same time, so it ran off faster than the ground could soak it in.
There is a fire tower you can climb up, a suspension bridge across the Wilson River and a very nice interpretive center. John is checking out a restored 1930’s wild land fire fighting vehicle. It has barrels of water on the back with spigots on them.
The Tillamook Forest Center from the top of the fire tower. You can kind of see the suspension bridge behind it. We went on a ranger led hike about rain forests. Very informative. Then we hiked a little over 4 miles along the river.
Some fall colors in the vine maple here. Very lush forest.
We hiked to Wilson Falls. They ended up only being mostly a pretty trickle.
It was very mossy there.
Curly fern, elderberry berries, a cascara shrub- we learned from a teen ager on the rainforest hike that it is easy to remember cascara, it is like mascara. . ., snow berries, asters and a clump of red berries.
On the way back we stopped in Tillamook at the Pelican brewery- brewed by the sea to sample their beer. Two years ago when we were through here they were closed, but having their grand opening in a few days.
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