A rainy day in the rain forest

Another day with heavy overcast conditions. One of my options whilst on the Olympic peninsula is to go high up Hurricane Ridge but with such low cloud I decided to go for the other option which was the Hoh Rain Forest.(http://www.nps.gov/olym/planyourvisit/visiting-the-hoh.htm) This is a rare habitat of temperate rain forest. It was quite a 57 mile drive through very tall trees and around lakes to get to Forks (apparently famous for the Twilight books and movies but hat was news to me!) to call into the visitor centre then another 20 or so miles into the rain forest. Rain fell on and off all day, but then it is a rain forest!
There is an entry fee of $15 for the whole park and this is paid to a park ranger in a small cabin by the road as you approach the start of the trails - and yes, they do wear hats like Mr Ranger in Yogi Bear.  There is a small visitor centre at the car park and once there I took the longer River Hoh trail to get to a waterfall (Mineral Creek Falls) at about 3 miles distance. The trail went through a Tolkienesque landscape of enormous pines (mostly Sitka and Douglas Fir), moss hanging from branches and lichens like cabbages! The trail was fairly flat and well maintained but the wilderness didn't seem far away. Once at the waterfall I took plenty of pictures as I tried to capture the blurred motion of the water. Light levels were pretty low so that helped to prolong the shutter speeds.

Mineral Creek Falls

The sheer scale and enclosing nature of the forest made it hard to capture the forest on camera. There was no easy way to capture the scale and grandeur of it all.

Hoh Rain Forest

The only wildlife I saw was an huge Elk stag (across the river), a Chipmunk on an old tree trunk and a Banana Slug (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_slug).

Chipmunk

On the journey back I stopped off to look at Crescent Lake, very scenic and crystal clear water.