Lake Quinault: A trip report

Maybe it's a sign of a deep acceptance of myself as a Pacific Northwesterner that, for my birthday, I chose to take a trip to the Quinault Rain Forest on the Olympic Peninsula.  It could also be a sign that I couldn't afford a week in the Caribbean. 

We stayed at the Lake Quinault Lodge which was built in about 3 months for $90,000 in 1926.  The property sits directly on the lake and from the grounds there are several easy hikes either along the lake or into the forest that seems to be trying its hardest at every given moment to repossess the land carved out of it by humans.

 Whereas Portland receives a little over 3 feet of rain per year, this area of the world gets about 12 feet.  When we arrived at the front desk of the lodge I heard the receptionist saying into the phone, "There's no guarantee. It rains even in August.  It's the rain forest."  While she remained pleasant, I could tell that she said this many times a day to people hoping to find a patch of sun in this wet, moss-rich landscape.

We were lucky, lucky folk that the most rain we saw was on I-5 on our way there.  The clouds parted right around sunset and stayed away for the rest of our trip. 

An inviting dock pulled promises from us to return in the summer. Of course, we knew that in August the dock would be full of screaming children, all the sweet solitude of it crowded beneath dozens of slapping feet.

We watched for cougars.  We saw none.  We didn't watch for foxes, but were briefly blessed with one crossing the main road.  One fox, half a dozen blue jays, and dozens of strutting crows.

The best place we found for a good thick coating of moss was the Maple Glade trail on the North shore of the lake.  Past the field of elk, we stepped into the creepy, quiet and boggy glade. 

 There's a partially restored homestead on the trail and it was interesting to imagine a family settling there in what felt like the middle of nowhere in 2010. Is there any way these monstrous, fuzzy trees seemed less frightening at the turn of the century?  How many months of cool, gloomy days would it take before you surrendered to the moss?

I don't know what those homesteaders thought, but all I could think about was how the whole place was simultaneously strange, beautiful and a good place to hide a dead body.

Back at the Lodge, a good dose of fire-warmed couches and sturdy wood beams cleared my head of most of its morbid thoughts. . .

That is until I looked up at the stencils of teeth-bearing indians and stalking wolves painted onto each of the large pillars.











 Better to stay focused on the beauty outside: the lake, the dew drying slowly from the lawn and the Adirondacks, coupled and waiting for company.