Hoh Rainforest

In the western part of Olympic National Park lies a temperate rainforest.  Hoh Rainforest is a wonderful place to camp.  My sister didn't want to camp with us because she did not want to camp in the rain.  We had wonderful weather the entire time we were there, right up until we left.  

The 12 or 14 feet of precipitation they get annually helps the trees grow BIG.  We were all amazed at how big the trees were, and all the amazing growth just hanging out in the forest.  While tropical rainforests have the greatest biodiversity, temperate rainforests have the greatest biomass.  They're DENSE with all the growth.  The kids and Bill went to a talk about all the growth and they were pleased as punch to show me all the epiphytes, spores, licorice fern, and other types of growth in the forest.  NB loved the sulphur shells, and he told me all about Goblin's Gold, which we looked for but didn't find.        

Seriously, trees big enough to climb into the underside.  These guys grow on nurselogs, and when the nurselogs decay away, the trees are stilted, so you can climb in and around these trees.              

Our campground host told Bill that elk come through the campground.  Never happened while we were there, but we did get to see the herd hanging out on the island on the drive back to the campground.          

The colors were hard to catch in true likeness.  I challenged NB to count the different greens we saw, and I think he got up to something like 17.  He saw more banana slugs than that (21), but 17 different greens is impressive!