October 15, 2015 Hoh Rain Forest, Olympic National Park, Washington

It was a rainy day, in the 60’s, so we went to the rain forest.

We had to go through the vampire land of Forks, Washington on the way.  Bella’s truck was parked in front of the visitors center. Bella was one of the characters in the Twilight book series about vampires. The Hoh is the rainiest place in the park. It gets around 180 inches of rain a year. It has never been logged, it is wet and fertile, so the trees are enormous, it is very, very  green and lush. Trees are as tall as 200-300 feet.

 

We stopped at a scenic turn out for Big Tree. It is huge. Unfortunatly the wind blew it over in 2014, so there is a huge stump. There is a small trail around behind it that is full of trees just as large. Here a fallen tree is covered with moss and green plants.

 

In the Hall of Moss the moss drips feet off the trees. It is amazing.

 

These three trees sprouted on a fallen lot and got huge. The ferns are tri colored for fall, green, yellow and orange.

 

John under a decorated arch. The fall leaves from the maples were gorgeous with the green moss. The trees need sunlight, so the lower branches fall off and get moss covered.

  

Fall colors and big mossy trees. John is in the first one, so you can see how large the trees are.

More fall colors and mossy branches.

 

The trees are so big the trunks look like dinosaur feet to me.

 

A really big bull elk. The campground is closed because the elk rut and mate here, so we walked through to see if in the future our coach would fit in the campground and ran into this guy. There are many places long enough for the coach.  The Hoh river runs down from the glacier fields of Mt Olympus, so the water is very blue from the glacier flour, or finely ground up rocks dissolved in the water. It would look turquoise if the sun was shining.

  

Grasping roots, strawberry flower, long hanging moss over the stream with long flowing water grass and duck weed.

 

The tree trunks become planters, a cute small gater snake, lettuce leave lichen, it is a big as lettuce leaves too, maple leaves in a big fern.