Olympics - Hoh Rain Forest

November 2008

This weekend, Mel and I decided to make the trek out to the Olympic peninsula, and visit the Hoh rain forest. Our original plan was to leave early on Saturday morning, but after a few too many beers and games of pool with Brian and Evan the night before, we got moving a bit later than we though.

After leaving Seattle around 10:30ish, we made good time to the peninsula and soon found ourselves at the Hoh ranger station paying and finding a campsite. We quickly set up camp and stashed our beer in the river to keep it cold, then set off for a quick hike with the remaining hour of light. Here are some pics from day one:

View from our campsite

Cool Fungus

Hanging Moss

Mel in the Maple Grove

After we came back, we played a game of cribbage then cooked some food and rescued the beer from the river. Even though it was super early, I was pretty tired and went to sleep while Mel killed the battery on my iphone. We woke up pretty late, and leisurely made breakfast and cleaned up camp. Our plan was to hike the Hoh river trail to 5 mile island, but with the recent rains there were some interesting river crossings and we turned around about 4.5 miles in. We had fantastic weather the whole day, not a drop of rain. After making it back to the car, we cruised back to seattle with one stop at the hungry bear Cafe for some food. We made it onto a Ferry just before it left, so we didn't get to stop for ice cream in Kingston(Thank goodness Evan wasn't with us, he would have been pretty upset :). Here are some pics from day 2: