Rainforest Visit

The Simmons clan invaded Washington this weekend and Stacey was kind enough to invite us to come along. We rented a house in Port Angeles which sits on the Strait Jaun de Fuca with Canada visible across the strait. The price of admission was a pot of chili which I was glad to make!

Stacey beat me to the punch on the blog post. Here is a link if you want to read more about the weekend.

http://ihavenogreaterjoy.blogspot.com/

On Saturday we went to the Ho rain forest which is completely different than the Quinault forest. There were no Cedar trees and the trees were not nearly as big in the Ho forest. Here are a few pictures of a very fun day.

Kristi and Chas on a stream bank on the way into the forest. It was very COLD and appropriately rainy. The snowline was only a few hundred feet above the valley floor. It was the first time my southern kids had seen that phenomenon. As we were driving in I could see the steelhead fishermen standing in the stream. I thought of you Dad. Maybe next year we will get a shot at those trout!

The forest was very, very mossy. I was astounded to read that it gets 140 inches of rain a year. It has snowed the week before and there was patches of snow on the ground still.

This water was about 6 feet deep at this spot but was crystal clear. I found out later that it comes from spring. Can you see the K in the picture? I didn’t notice it until I created this post.

I’m amazed that the trees survive with all this moss hanging off their branches. Seems like this would just choke them out. We will have to make a visit in the summer to see what these maple trees look like with leaves on.

I thought this one was classic. If you leave anything standing still in the Ho Rain Forest it will soon be covered in moss!

Lucy the great hiker. She did great in one of her homemade hats and her wonderful carrier. Saturday was a wet and yucky day but she didn’t care.

We finished off the day with a couple of beautiful waterfalls. I remember seeing these types of falls in Oregon when we went for the Harris Reunions. Now that I have lived through a winter I understand where all that water comes from!!

Here we are on the banks of Crescent lake or Lake Crescent. It was beautiful. We were wet, cold and ready to go back to the house and have some hot chili!