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Powered by my post-mountain sprouted/rice lentil dinner and the free quinoa cookie I was given by the barista for breakfast (I think I made it west) I headed across the state. It was Memorial Day, the seventh day of driving since Marquette. I could not get my keys until Tuesday and Zamana would be working until 9 or 10 that night. So I decided to make another national park before turning around and coming back. If I've made it this far, why not make it all the way to the pacific coast?
I stayed at Lake Crescent in Olympic National Park. I heard owls, saw a bat fluttering across the water, took a dusk hike through old growth rainforest. I didn't even know we had rainforests on this continent. We do.
Oh yeah, there's a petrified forest. Note to come back here.
Another "virtually extinct" plaque. So interesting. The Wanapums are around, here and here.
After the Rockies and before the Cascades.
Oh look! Using a phone in traffic became decidedly more risky all of a sudden.
But I had to get the first glimpse...
I made it. Here's the evidence. (This is the Fremont Troll.)
My apartment building doesn't look so bad from the outside. At least I know I have a place to live in there. Now let's carry on and go for a ferry ride.
I have a feeling i'm going to be eating a lot of pho.
My little car is on a ferry!
Who wants to sign a petition for my parents to move here?
Floating bridge.
Clouds stacked on clouds.
Earth touching sky 2: Lake Crescent.
Dusk is a nice time to walk. There were a couple of blacktail deer. I heard a few variations of owl song, avoided stepping on a giant snail, saw what I think was a wood duck and also black and white ducks that at first I thought were loons and then quacked.
I take lots of pictures of signs. But the comment about the very long human presence reminded me of a book I picked up at a Native American bookstore about Port Angeles. The city eventually changed plans for building a dock because of the sheer amount of human remains and artifacts they were digging up. The tribe had been involved to preserve them and finally decided enough was enough. One woman had a response to the surprise people were feeling that there would be so much under the ground right in the spot where people were living today in the city. She said "Well we weren't idiots, we knew where to live." And really it's amazing. It's so peaceful, cool, the water is full of life, it's sheltered from the weather coming in off the ocean.
Standing on the shoulders of giants: the old trees nurse the young ones, which grow right out of the stumps.
I had written: I can't believe I get to live here. Yellow, purple, pink, orange, white, and the hazy red of the forest floor. Flowers. Rainforest. Tonight i'm staying in a rainforest.
The light was glowing, green-filtered into a million shades. These pictures do not do it justice.
Enough pictures of trees? I had a bison burger. Not a steak yet, Ryan. I highly recommend staying at Lake Crescent Lodge, most of the pictures of the forest and the lake are from around there.
So there. I crossed two mountain ranges, made it to Seattle, and went on from there. Early the next morning I got up and went to the westernmost point in the lower 48 states, a 6 mile hike all by myself. Which now I will brag about. The next post will have pictures of that.
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