Olympic National Park, WA

Lisa and I were amazed to find these stunning specimens growing on the side of a log, opposite the trail.  Perhaps we shouldn’t have been surprised, the place was packed with stunning and wild growths of all sorts.  The entire rainforest area of Olympic has a decidedly Tim Burton feel to it.  We kept expecting Johnny Depp to appear from behind the next tree.  To spend a day in the wilderness around these amazing sights took us to a level of serenity and calm we hadn’t experienced in some time.

We were still on eastern time and so we awoke well ahead of the sunrise, and headed down to the beach to catch the tidal pools in time, and the sunrise early.  As I sipped a coffee and Lisa a hot cocoa, we watched this wonderful spectrum of colors develop in the eastern sky and slowly overtake the beach.  Again, moments of bliss, solitude and personal space abounded for us - and all the cares, hurries or worries in the world seemed to be for someone else in another time and space.

We had made our way around to the northen side of the park the next day when we took the hike to Marymere Falls - a fairly simple climb in, and out.  The falls were worth it, but the changes from the rainforest to this new more “real” forest to the heather fields and tundra we soon experienced, made this rival driving south-north in Arizona as the most dramatic changes in landscape I’ve seen in such short periods of time.  Never had such a good time, hope to have it one time more….