roadtrip | summer 2011 | sun aug 7 | rainforest & beach

Time to break camp and hit the road. After eggs and toast for breakfast, we headed west. These are places that are farther than a day trip from Seattle, far enough that the houses are few and far between, and the towns no bigger than a few small shops and a gas station. The biggest of these is Forks, where we stopped off for a resupply at the grocery store.

Forks has two claims to fame, one depending on the other: the first, it's the greyest, rainiest place in the US; second, that greyness made it the perfect setting for the Twilight vampire novels, which have turned into a cult phenomenon. Here and there in town you could see Twilight this-and-that, but not being huge fans, we didn't take a closer look.

We turned off Highway 101 at the Hoh River, winding up the valley. On the way up, we stopped to see two Roosevelt Elk grazing along the banks of the river. They were both bucks, and though one kept to the shadows and brush, the other was out in the sunlight. His full rack was fuzzy and shiny, and he was nibbling the little flowers that grow in the riverbed.

Roosevelt Elk, Hoh River.

The Hoh Visitor Center sits at the gateway to a temperate rainforest -- one that has seasonal weather, but enough biomass to qualify as a marvel of living material. In fact, although it has less diversity of species than the Amazon, it has more actual living mass per square mile. I'll give you a hint: there are a lot of very tall trees, and every inch of them is covered with moss.

In the Hall of Mosses, Hoh Rainforest.

The trees are up to 1,000 years old, and they fall everywhere, exposing their roots and pulling up great mounds of dirt. When they fall, new trees grow along the trunks, filling in cracks and using the nutrients to reach to the sun. Gradually the "nurse" tree crumbles and turns back into dirt, collapsing and leaving amazing root structures that twist and turn and arch. They're mostly western hemlock and spruce, filled in with flowering maples. Lichens crust the decaying logs, and ferns fill in the sun-dappled glades.

Roots that grew around a nurse tree.

We hiked the two small hikes from the visitor center -- the Hall of Mosses and the Spruce Grove. On the Hall of Mosses trail Matty spotted a bird on a branch nearby -- which turned out to be another owl. A small one, this one brown and dark. A Burrowing Owl, diurnal, but very rare in this region.

As we watched, it swooped from the branch to the forest floor, then back up to the branch with a tiny black mouse in its talons. We took pictures as he ate his lunch, then continued on our hike in and around the fallen trees and the stones on the river bed.

Burrowing Owl with his furry lunch, Hoh Rainforest.

After spending most of the afternoon in the forest, we kept along south on 101 to Kalaloch, a small lodge and campground on the coast. It's the only campground on the coast that's within the National Park, and therefore the only one you can pre-reserve—we were lucky to get a spot, even reserving six months in advance.

And what a spot it was. As we pulled in, we found that we were at the end of one of the loops, in a large and sheltered space with moss-covered trees, a hidden nook for our tent and two baby bunnies living in a hollow of the tree. We could hear the waves just over the bluff, but were hidden from the other campsites and from the breeze.

After a walk on the beach -- splashing waves, balancing on driftwood logs -- we had a simple dinner. Matty played with the kids from the neighboring campsite, darting around the campground loop on their little scooters and climbing the trees. He told them all about his how he got his Junior Ranger badge from the Visitor Center, which he had to earn by completing a workbook and taking a pledge to protect the forest.

After we settled in, Matty sat at the fire pit, quietly lighting the tip of a stick on fire and waving it around. He was casting spells with the glowing ember -- a spell to rid us of mosquitos, a spell for good and no rain. A spell for plenty of dessert at the end of a long day.


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