Day 33 - Hoh my, this is different!

Unfortunately. we were greeted with a white haze today from a fire in British Columbia. You cannot see the mountains and the waters are dull. Fortunately, we were here around 7 years ago and we remember how beautiful the lakes and surrounding mountains are. We stayed at the Crescent Lodge back then which we revisited again today reminding us how charming this place was. Back then, the water was a beautiful azure blue set against the towering green-pined mountains. We snuck in a picture from 7 years ago to show the difference.

The place was buzzing with activity on our visit today. When we stayed here before, it was early fall and practically empty. We are hoping that this clears somewhat by Friday since we are leaving on Sunday.

Up early and off to the Hoh Rain Forest. The trip took about 1-1/2 hours. The setup of this national park makes for lots of driving to get anywhere. Route 101 circles the park and from this road you hit off-shoot roads toward the center of the park. 75% of this park is wilderness so there aren’t as many “highlights” like the other parks we have been to so far.

The Hoh Rain Forest is very unique. This area of the park gets over 12 feet of rain each year. We didn’t have the time to visit this part of the park when we were here years ago. The pleasantly-shaded trail was about 3/4 mile and level. Molly took Jim and Carol here on one of their visits and Jim said that he was really able to breath. The air quality is wonderful. You can smell the ozone. The streams are crystal clear because of the complex filtering system of rock layers and moss. A lot of the trees are covered in moss which makes for an eerie landscape. However, the moss serves an important service for the trees. Some of the trees have developed root systems that actually climb on themselves to reach the moss for water when there is less rain.

The second trail called the Spruce Valley Trail was about 1.5 miles long. Here we saw towering pines some up to 250 ft. Part of the trail passed the Hoh River but again, the smoke clouded the mountains and water.

From the rainforest we headed to Ruby Beach which was close by. Like the rainforest, this beach is unusual. It has many large driftwood logs on the rear of the large smooth-pebbled beach with huge rock formations that pop up from the beach. Large nesting colonies of birds like common murres and tufted puffins need these rocky outposts.

From here we visited Crescent Lodge. Great memories!