October 21, 2023 Olympic National Park

 High of 56 and sunny midday. 

We stopped at the visitors center first. John with a cross section of a 650 year old Douglas fir. It has rings marked when events happened. The mark near  his left shoulder is when the Declaration of Independence was signed. The mark by his right shoulder  was when the Mayflower landed at Plymouth Rock.  The middle said only Indians lived here then. John found a delightful book about Banana Slugs. 

John with a stump of an old growth tree on the Madison Falls hike. Madison Falls. 

This artist was doing a great job painting the falls. The falls trail was only 0.2 miles. I wanted to hike farther, but the road was closed due to a bridge out so the other trails were inaccessible. John looked at this map and saw a bypass trail around the bridge. So we hiked the closed road to the by pass trail to the Elwha forest loop trail and back. Beautiful hike. 

The fall leaves are lovely.

Nice moss on an old growth Douglas fir trunk. The fallen maple leaves decorate everything.

We checked out the washed out bridge. Top photo where the river and piles of tree trunks are was the bridge and road,  The lower photo is the other side, there is an abrupt drop off where the bridge had been marked with the yellow zigzag. There also had been an old campground beyond the bridge that also got washed out. Nice rocks and reflection.

Mossy maple branches. An old campground was washed out on the other side of the river. You can see the collapsed roof of the group shelter.

Mossy trees and fall colors. John on the trail with fall leaves and mossy trees. 

Cool looking fungus, it was about an inch tall, pink flower, tiny orange mushroom, snow berries, moss with ferns and tiny leaves growing through it, a maple leave grasping a fern branch, tiny orange suction looking mushrooms, and golden rod. Yellow pea flowers. We stopped at the brand new Elwha River casino on the Klallam Indian reservation, the sign for the lady's room at the casino, clover flower, yarrow and at the wedding reception one of the gifts was a cast iron fry pan that said on the bottom, this side toward husband. 

Back at the campground a big wedding reception was going on. It had a sign that said everyone welcome, so we joined in. They had a wood fired pizza oven and the pizza was delicious, also smoked ribs. And cake they hadn't cut yet before we left. They were also hand pressing apples for cider, which was really, really good. The groom Marcus and bride Katie dancing. Marcus's parents own the RV park. We are headed from sea level to around 3,000 feet to Sol Duc Hot springs for a week. Looks cold up there! But there is the hot spring. We will be off grid for the week there. Will have lots of spare time with  no internet.