October 22, 2015 Queets river, Washington

Sunny day that made it up to 70 degrees today. Lovely.

Our view this am. In the corner are two people doing yoga on the beach, we met them later, they are from Telluride, Colorado. They have 10 weeks off and are touring in a van. They are 5 weeks into their trip. We drove up the Queets-pronounced Qweets- river. On the map was a trail going up the river valley. When we got up there we found out you had to ford the river to hike up the valley, so we hiked the Sam’s loop trail instead. This is a low use area, the road was gravel and one lane, the trail sign had moss on it and the trail was a little sketchy, but very nice.

 

Rain forest and river bottom. Lots of moss, but also some meadows with lots of elk tracks.

 

John on barely used bridge, it is moss covered. The trail widened out near the ranger station.

The ranger station looks like it hasn’t been manned is awhile. The trail then followed the Queets river back to where we started at the end of the road.

  

Fall colors. The Queets river is also glacier fed, but only looked really blue from up above it.

We hiked 4 miles. We found a nice sunny spot on the river and had lunch and hung out  for awhile. Back at camp at Kalaloch we walked on the beach and visited with the Telluride people.

 

Sunset was lovely. The Telluride people took our photo for us.

 

Two kinds of fungus. The orange one is a coral fungus and the brown one is a tree ear about 12 inches across, a banana slug, a mushroom covered log and a lupine.