Our weekend in the Olympic Rain Forest
From Olympic Rain Forest 2010
We had a great little vacation to the NW Washington wilderness this weekend.
On Friday the kids got to play with a bunch of star fish, anemones, sea urchins, and other sea creatures at the Port Townsend Marine Science Center . Then we went to see a variety of wild animals at the Olympic Game Farm where Disney kept the wild animals for all it's old animal films. They still had the set for the last Disney film that was shot there, complete with the old massive lights that they had used. You can see the words "Hollywood, Calif." stamped on some of them. Funny to find a room full of them in a barn on an animal preserve.
We tossed bread to some of the animals and Karen, throwing for distance into one enclosure, somehow managed to toss a slice of bread onto a rhino's head. He eventually knocked it off with is ear and a seagull took it. I drove through the open part of the park where I was told not to stop the car among the buffalo or elk. The buffalo were blocking the road out, so I had to circle around for a while waiting for an exit. They eventually cleared off and I started out, but an adolescent male buffalo decided he would see if we were serious and headed into the path to stop us. I steered around him but he bumped us with his head on the way by to see if we would flinch.
Saturday started off at Lake Crescent, WA . The water is surprisingly blue in that lake and the fog rises all around through the trees. Next to the Hoh Rain Forest , which was surprisingly sunny while we were there. We did the tour in the Hall of Moss which was very pretty and looked about like it sounds. Then off to Ruby Beach where the rain was waiting for us. That was the first time the kids have seen the real Pacific Ocean and not just Puget Sound.
Before returning on Sunday we went up to Hurricane Ridge where we saw, well, mostly clouds and fog. Right as we were about to leave we saw a ring tailed... marmot? Turns out he was just splotchy and the rings on his tail were splotches. He was a mystery critter for a while though. He was probably an Olympic Marmot.
From Olympic Rain Forest 2010