I have a few photos, not many, but a few, that I don’t remember taking or where exactly I was when I photographed the scene. All I know for sure is that it is a small creek on the west side of the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State.
No doubt I was inside the borders of the Olympic National Park. The west side of the Olympic Range faces the ocean and catches all the storms that come in off of the Pacific. Of course, this is where the rain forests are located as the area gets 140-170 inches of rain per year. That’s a lot of rain! It’s the wettest part of the continental United States. Only the island of Kauai in Hawaii gets more rain than here.
Because this is a temperate rainforest, as opposed to a tropical one like the Amazon Rainforest in South America, it is dominated by dense coniferous timber, including Sitka Spruce, Western Hemlock, Coast Douglas-Fir and Western Red Cedar and mosses that coat the bark of these trees and even drip down from their branches in green, moist tendrils.
There are plenty of lovely hiking trails in this area, but be prepared to get wet…even on the rare sunny day. When I hiked these trails, the woods were filled with impromptu lakes overflowing streams and lots and lots of mud…and it was a sunny day. Still, I am glad I did get to hike here and see it all for myself as it is certainly the exact opposite of where I live now.
Oh…just for your information, the eastern part of the National Park, the part separated from the west by the Olympic Mountains, only gets about 16” of rain per year. What a huge difference a mountain range can make.
(To see a larger version of this photo, just click on the image)
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