Monday - Day Three - Washington Trip

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We woke up to a slight bit of overcast, but no rain and we headed out around the lake a short distance to visit the Big Cedar of Quinalt. There was one small sign on the road and a trail head that lead into the forest.

The short trail climbed up a hill and lead to a short overlook of the forest.

The Cedar itself was massive, and as is the case with most natural objects of large size, up close your camera can never adequately capture their entire essense.

The trees were covered in a beautiful swirling moss, and even the trees that weren't "the big one", were still amazing in their size.

From there we headed over to the Quinalt Loop Trail, which took us adjacent to the lake through the rain forest and across several small streams. The nurse logs were beautiful, where fallen trees began nursing growth on the topside of the trunk.

Another thing of wonder was the banana slugs, they were everywhere. We were also intrigued by the three leaf clover looking plants. We read in a hiking book they were called Oregon Oxalia, and we found they had sour taste if you chewed on their stems.

The trail through the forest was serene, a nice wide comfortable trail through massive trees and ferns and growth everwhere.

We stopped along a stream to have lunch, on a nice bench.

Futher down the trail we came to a beautiful waterfall. There was a trail that lead down one side with nice posts that were perfect for balancing a camera on. I setup and had the family wait for me on the bridge. The timer on the camera is not extremely long so I knew I was going to have to be quick about it. I ran as fast as I could to make it into the picture. However the bridge, made of split logs, is quite slick due to the mositure, and JUST as the camera went off my feet slipped out from beneath me and I ended up horizontal in the picutre. At the end of the day, Kiah kept wanting to cary Sof in the backpack, so I hoised her up. Kiah lasted about 5 minutes. It was a great hike along the Quinault loop trail.

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