Olympic National Park

Derek here again!

I have this weekend off from work, so I did some exploring yesterday. I left around 7:30 yesterday morning and drove up the peninsula to check out the Olympic National Park. I started the day at Hurricane Ridge which is up in the mountains in the center of the peninsula. Check out the views!

I think Mt. Olympus is somewhere in the middle of that range, but who knows really... they all look the same.

Look at these blacktail deer that were grazing in the alpine meadow!

The view of the valley, Puget Sound and Mount Rainier in the background.

Quite steep cliffs along the route!

Within an hour drive from the mountains is the Pacific Coast which is covered with driftwood that washed down from the old growth forests.

Not your typical Gulf of Mexico sandy beaches.
Very rocky!
Very cliffy!

I drove through Forks, WA, which is in fact a real town situated between the beach, the mountains, and an Indian Reservation like in the movie Twilight. Sarah wanted a picture of the sign so I literally had to wait 15 minutes to get a picture of this sign without a 15-25 year old girl standing in front of it. No joke.

Forks is now a tourist trap for Twilight fans. Even the Subway has a Twilight sandwich made with Black Forest Ham. There are lots of randomly placed signs that say "Treaty Line Here" which definitely made things confusing, and I can now understand the conflict in the movie over territory. For the record, I didn't see any vampires or werewolves the entire trip, but I did see a lot of pale people. I've spoken to much about Twilight...moving on.

A short drive from Forks is the Hoh Rainforest which is situated on the Pacific side of the mountains so an average of 180 inches of rain is squeezed out of the moist air each year as it passes over the mountains. It looks like there should be dinosaurs wandering through this forest!

Look at all of the moss on this tree! I happened to go to the rainforest on a rare day when it wasn't raining, which makes it just a normal forest that looks very creepy.Trees growing on what is left of a tree that had been blown down hundreds of years ago!

The Hoh River winding from glacier, through the rainforest, and down to the Pacific.

The tallest Christmas trees (Douglas firs) that I've ever seen!

It was quite a day. I got back to my room at around 9:30 last night and began working on this blog post. I think that the Olympic peninsula is an amazing place with the widest variety of climates that I've ever seen! I hope to do some more exploring today, so perhaps you will get another blog post from me soon!