Wednesday, August 9, 2017

pnw adventures: hoh rainforest

The Hoh Rainforest is another stop within the Olympics National Park. 
The Hoh Rainforest is on the completely other side of the park from Hurricane Ridge and there is no direct roads there.  You have to drive all the way around.
It's about two hours from Port Angeles.
You pass through Forks and figure out why the writing is so simple in the Twilight Books.
Forks is simple, yo.
We decided to take the Hall of Mosses Trail.
It's almost a mile and you think it won't take you that long to finish it...
It takes a while to finish it.
The Rainforest gets around 12-14 feet of rain a year.
It was not raining while we were there, thank goodness, the trail would have not been as much fun.
There is a campground there.  It is close to the Hoh River, which is what the highway follows to get to the visitors center and the trails.
There was a hornet warning before we entered this area.  We didn't see any hornets though.
The trees are unbelievable big.  Most of them you couldn't see the tops through the canopy. 
And yes, I do know there are even larger trees out there in the world.
The Sitka spruce and western hemlock are the most dominant trees in the forest.  There was a pull off for the largest Sitka tree somewhere along the road.  We did not pull off.  I'm sure it was amazing,
The forest was pretty magical in the way it looked.  I think you could get lost in it for hours if you went off trail.
Apparently there are a lot of animals that inhabit the area.  Violett made sure to let them all know we were there.  There are tree frogs, bobcats, cougars, black bears, elk, etc....
Hiding in the tree.
Banana Slugs are fun?  They are also being pushed out the area by the Black Slug.  The Black Slug is an invasive species from Europe.
"Walking" across the creek

1 comment:

  1. I absolutely love all these photos, Morgan. Frankly, I believe that I could get lost for days--not hours--if I ever ventured off the trail in a rain forest. Good thing my children kept me on the trail. The park ranger helped too, of course.

    Thank you so much for sharing this adventure with your readers. Enjoy your weekend!

    ReplyDelete