This morning we continued to the Hoh Rain Forest in Olympic National Park. This forest should be the stage for fairy tales. The tree trunks and branches are covered in thick moss-like plants that hang down like beards. Roots and old logs look like faces of dangerous creatures while providing nutrients to the next generation of trees. When a dead tree falls, mosses begin to cover it and decay sets in. New saplings start growing on top of the old log and eventually wrap their roots around the old log.  The old log continues to rot away leaving root arches from the new tree where it once lay.

 

We met another photographer couple on our hike through the rainforest and met them again at our next stop at Ruby Beach where we experienced the cloud forest. Despite the fact that it was a sunny day with perfectly blue sky, this beach was covered in fog and low cloud and appeared black and white. We spent a couple of hours there talking about photography and dog training and took some nice pictures.

Since we needed to do laundry and RV-cleaning we stayed at a full service RV park in Hoquiam. However, laundry did not start before dinner. We walked for about 3kms to the 8th Street Ale House where we had steak skillet and Guinness Pot Roast dinners along with a local ale. After walking back to our campsite we started laundry which we finished, except for a few damp specimens, at around midnight.

We started the morning with writing five days of blog entries! Needless to say we didn’t leave too early.

First stop was the Northwest Native Expressions Art Gallery in Sequim with beautiful and very reasonably priced native art, including artists from Canada. We bought a small carving of a hummingbird, made by a local artist.

Lunch was at the Black Bear Diner, also in Sequim, where we had a drink made of iced tea, lemonade and fresh strawberries. Delicious and refreshing and soon to be on our home menu.

The highlight in the afternoon was a first glimpse of the northern rain forest which we will explore tomorrow.

We enjoyed a brief stay at Lake Crescent before we found our new campground at the Minnie Peterson campground near the Hoh Rain Forest. This campground only has 8 spots and we were able to secure the very last spot which was reserved for people with disabilities until 6PM. As we had arrived at 5PM, we had a tense hour of waiting for wheelchairs to arrive and take the spot.

At 6PM sharp we breathed a sigh of relief, locked the RV and headed for a short hike along and in the nearby Hoh river.

We started the morning with breakfast at Geraldines Counter with our friends and then visited the Discovery Park for a hike with a view of the Puget Sound, wild orchids and blackberries.

Later on we met Connie, a photography friend we had met earlier in the year in Paris and had a very engaging conversation with her at a local Starbucks.

She then guided us to the ferry dock for our short ferry ride to Bainbridge Island.

We picked a Walmart close by to stay for the night and had a mediocre dinner at a Jack-in-the-Box, downloaded images and called it a day.

We left our campground relatively early as we wanted to be in Seattle by early afternoon. The detour around the forest fire turned out to be a beautiful winding road adjacent to a river. Once back on Hwy 2 we crossed the Steven’s Pass and then headed downwards to the Seattle area. The small towns became larger and more attractive as we neared Seattle. We stopped at the Tijuana Restaurant in Monroe for authentic Mexican burritos.

Finally we were reminded of what traffic jams are as we drove through Seattle. We met our friends, had good conversations and dinner at their beautiful house. A city tour of Seattle at night followed and we decided to stay at their place overnight.

The morning came early. 4AM to be exact. We left the Walmart parking lot to catch a sunrise in the Palouse. We were lucky to find a great spot on a dirt road to photograph, making the early wakeup worthwhile.

Now we deserved a great breakfast and that we got at the Top Notch Cafe in Colfax. This cafe could have been on Route 66 with its booths, barstools and milk shake mixer. The food was plentiful and really good. Pete, the owner, had lived in a number of different states and had bought this cafe from his nephew about 10 years ago. A good number of locals had their morning coffee, chatted and teased each other about the size of their combines.

Next stop was Spokane, a beautiful city bisected by the roaring Spokane river. Two hydroelectric plants dating from the early 1900s provide power to the city. A riverside park has gondola rides across the falls, an Imax theatre, sculpture of runners and an old carousel ride among other attractions.

The drive from Spokane to the Grand Coulee Dam was mostly through the plains and we had 40 degree temperatures. The early morning wakeup caught up with us so we stopped at a rest area for an hour long nap.

We reached Grand Coulee Dam in good time, parked in the shade to keep Pepsi cool and visited the information centre to learn about the three powerhouses at the dam. A very informative video explained the geological processes that created the spectacular basalt column formations we were to see later on in the day.

We had a swim at the Steamboat Rock State park before heading further west.

All of a sudden it seemed that Hwy 2 had taken us to Bavaria, with alpine mountains, painted houses and schnitzels. The now busy town of Leavenworth had been a logging town that had fallen on hard times and had reinvented itself as a Bavarian themed tourist destination in the 1960s. We just had to stop for a schnitzel dinner at the Baren Haus.

A forest fire 8 km away had closed Hwy 2 and prevented us from continuing and the detour on a winding and narrow road at night didn’t seem advisable so we stayed at the lovely Alpine RV campground for the night.