RHH's photos with the keyword: hoh rainforest

We've been away for several days. We've been staying with our son and daughter-in-law in the northwest corner of Washington and my wife and I took a few days to travel to Olympic National Park on Washington's Olympic Peninsula. We took the ferry across to the peninsula and then traveled to the far west part of the park before working back to the north part of the park. On our way west, this was our first stop, Lake Crescent. We drove up the east side of the lake looking for orchids and stopping for photos. From there we went on to the Hoh Rainforest (first inset), a temperate rainforest on the west side of the mountains, one of three rainforests on the west side of the Olympic Mountains, and the most easily accessible of the three. At the Hoh we hiked the Hoh River River trail to Mineral Creek Falls, an easy hike of six miles out and back. Finished hiking there we drove further south to Ruby Beach (second inset) on the Pacific Ocean and walked the beach there for another five or six miles. We had our supper there as well and watched the sunset from the beach before heading to the town of Forks. The next day we drove around to the north part of the park and first explored part of the Sol Duc area before going on to Hurricane Ridge. From Hurricane Ridge we drove to Obstruction Point by way of an eight mile rough road and hiked the Grand Valley loop by way of Lillian Ridge (third inset), a strenuous hike of eleven miles with four thousand feet of elevation loss and gain. We spent the night in Port Angeles and then drove up the Deer Park Road, another rough gravel road, this morning and hiked to the top of Blue Mountain, a short hike with spectacular views. After driving back down we caught the ferry in Port Townsend and are "home" once again at our son and daughter-in-law and will be here until Monday when we return to Spokane.

The Hoh rainforest is a temperate rainforest on the west side of Washington's Olympic Peninsula, one of three rainforests there. We hiked the Hoh River trail for about three miles to a waterfall and then hiked back again before going on to Ruby Beach.

Here's one more of the Hoh Rainforest and the title reflects our feelings as we hiked through this unusual place.

One more shot from the Hoh Rainforest, this of a stream along the trails near the visitors' center. One of the ncie things about the Hoh is its accessibility. Though one can also hike back into the mountains the area around the visitors' center is easily walked by anyone.

Some of these lichens can be told apart only by chemical analysis, but this appears to be the Cup Lichen growing on a fallen log in the Hoh Rainforest. The photo was taken by my wife. Lichens are interesting for several reasons. They are a "mutalistic" association of a fungus and an alga (sometimes a bacterium). They also concentrate radioactive fallout passing it up the food chain. This happened with the Reindeer Lichen, reindeer and their herders following the Chernobyl disaster.

I promise I won't post too many more photos from the Hoh Rainforest. This one is of a Big-leaf Maple almost entirely covered with moss.

Lungwort is a large sheet-like lichen that usually grows up in the tops of trees, but after a windstorm litters the forest floor. Its scientific name, Lobaria pulmonaria, is a delight to say, and its common name comes from it reputed value in treating diseases of the lungs. That use, however, is based on the old medieval doctrine of signatures, which valued plants for their apparent similarity to the affected parts of the body. This was deemed valuable in treating lung diseases because it looks a bit the inner tissue of a lung. I photographed it in the Hoh Rainforest of western Washington, but it can be found in almost any forest in our area though it is very sensitive to air quality.

Another photo from the trails in the Hoh Rainforest in Olympic National Park - an amazing place. Our forests are all full of moss and lichens and ferns but nothing compares to these forests.

This was taken by my wife in the Hoh Rainforest and when I saw it I immediately thought of the hobbits in Lord of the Rings and the Old Forest at the beginning of their journey. In this case, of course, the hobbits are just three children who were ahead of us on the trail and the forest is in Olympic National Park. The large tree on the right is a Sitka Spruce and the dead tree next to it an old Western Red Cedar. Old Man Willow was nowhere to be found. On another note, I'll not be posting another photo until Saturday evening - am off to do some hiking.

After driving around to the west side of the Olympics we headed up the road to the Hoh Rainforest and near the parking area saw several Roosevelt Elk, inlcuding this bull. Roosevelt Elk or Olympic Elk is a subspecies of elk that is the largest in North America.