4th of July in the Olympics

We took full advantage of our only 3 day weekend this summer and headed north to the Olympic Peninsula. We had unusually warm weather for a rain forest, it was above 80 our first day there. We stayed at Seaquest (I know!) SP in Washington our first night - huge campground, most sites packed together, crowded and they wanted $21. I told Aaron I didn't want to pay until they made us, so we packed up at 5:30 am and got out of there before they could. The next night we stayed at North Fork CG in the park, it was only $10 and we had no trouble finding a spot since we got there at 9:30 am.
This must be one of the few places on earth that still has virgin rain forest, it's absolutely amazing to think these trees have been alive for 1,000 years. We saw a display in one of the visitor's centers showing the size of the growth rings in the trees in the rain forest compared to another dryer area of the park, they were at least double, so these trees are huge. This was the rainiest spot in the lower 48.
Big, juicy salmon berries everywhere, too bad they weren't very good, we could have had as many as we pleased.


One of the park's 6 largest trees in the world. I think this may be a type of cedar.


We hiked to Irely Lake, and were going to continue on to 3 Lakes, but it would have been a 14 mile hike, with not too much new to look at along the way, so we only went about 6.


A park ranger told us there were 3 free DNR campgrounds just outside the park near the Hoh, 2 were full but the one we stayed at had plenty of space and the sites were really nice, right off the Hoh river.


Aaron was pretty excited to take the Sub off road.


We also stopped along the coast line, although it was cloudy and fairly unimpressive. It was also difficult to get to due to all the driftwood that never gets cleared because it is a national park. We missed low tide, otherwise tidepooling would have been fun.


Soon: update on my garden - it's a growin'!