My time in Washington was overshadowed by feeling burned out. I planned on visiting Hoh rain forest, part of Olympic National Park, but I was not excited about seeing another forest or hiking. I spent part of one day at the Hoh visitor center, hoping that it would be more interesting than I expected and help me feel better. It didn't. I arrived in the early afternoon and waited over an hour before parking. The parking lot is small and once it fills up, one car must leave before another is allowed to enter. I hiked one of their shorter trails and saw nurse trees. These are trees that have fallen over and died. Young trees start growing on the dead tree, absorbing it's nutrients. Eventually the nurse tree rots away, leaving the new tree with it's roots shaping the space of the old tree as they dive into the ground. The picture to the right is the root ball of a fallen tree with young ones growing on top. Trees, throughout their life and death, support and give life to other plants and animals, surviving and growing in many of nature's challenging circumstances.
Forks, WA, as some might recall, is where the Twilight series take place. I had forgotten this. A Twilight museum in Forks reminded me. I went inside
John's Beach Combing museum instead. Accumulating since 1976, there are many "treasures" from the ocean to see. Some of the more unique items were airplane and space transport parts, sea beans, notes from bottles, and whale bones. One alcove was dedicated to items that washed up from Japan's 2011 tsunami. Another aisle had tubs of items from shipping containers lost during their ocean voyage. It's not a collection of items I would want at my home.
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Beach Combers Museum
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A note from a bottle
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"Tree of Life" |
The best part of my week near Forks, was camping on the beach. I took long walks along the shore in search of shells and watched many 9pm sunsets. On Sunday, I built a campfire and decided it would be a nice
tradition; Sunday evening campfires. A night
when the northern lights had a chance to be seen in WA, I stayed up to
watch the sky. I did not see the lights, but over three hours, I saw many
shooting stars! (I stopped counting after 15.) The space station also crossed the sky twice as I watched!
Sand dollars(SD) are very prolific at Kalaloch beach. Most that rest on the sand
were broken in half or the center was caved in. Closer to low tide
whole SD could be found at the edge of the waves. During a run, I found 10 of them! One morning
had a -1' low tide and exposed 16 perfect SD at the ocean's edge, not
even an one minute walk along beach was needed! I was joyful at seeing them, but sad that I
was leaving that day and did not have time to walk the length of the
beach looking for other shells.
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Ruby beach
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Ruby beach, north of Kalaloch beach is another beautiful place along the coast. It has something for everyone; sand for sand castles; rocks for throwing, skipping, or stacking; tide pools to explore; sea stacks to climb on or admire; lots of driftwood for beach fires (when allowed), building lean-tos, walking or sleeping on, playing with in pools, and log rolling; little fish in pools; swimming; seashells. I was surprised at how large a log was needed when trying to log roll. Short logs are not buoyant enough to hold much weight. The log I ended up using did sink to the bottom of the pond, but I could still push it with my feet while trying to stay balanced.
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sea stacks & rock stacks
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throwing rocks just because it's fun
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| jellyfish |
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log rolling
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Can you find all 5 cats? Answer at bottom.
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Leaving the coast, I drove to
Seattle Meowtropolitan, a cat cafe. No they do not serve cats in drink form, nor do they serve cats drinks. A cat cafe is a cafe with cats living there, and people can spend time with them. Some of the cats can be adopted. It provides cats the opportunity to be socialized in a friendly atmosphere, and lets people who might not have a pet at home play, or try to play, with some cats. It costs $15 for an one hour cat visit. The drive to Seattle took twice as long as expected; road traffic, construction, a closed bridge, and inaccurate information about when to arrive for the ferry, all added to the drive time. Yet, I somehow managed to arrive for the last cat session of the day and they accepted me as a walk-in. After the stressful delays, it was nice to be in a room with cats, but those cats were not my cat. One hour is not enough time to get to know a cat and learn it's favorite scratching spots. It is also hard when most of the cats just wanted to be left alone. One cat jumped on a table to eat the whip cream off an unattended drink, and another cat watched intently as a kid repeatedly rolled a ball in a wheel, but it never tried to get the ball. I eventually sat back and sketched the cats until the hour was up.
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During my second week in WA, I explored the Tri-Cities (Kennewick, Pasco, and Richland). I was searching for Mercy. (She would hate the pun.) Mercy Thompson is the main character in a book series written by Patricia Briggs. A simple map is included at the beginning of the books, pointing out the main locations of the story. It was interesting to discover that in real life, those main locations were public places; a fairground, parks, and a dirt road leading to a river. It makes sense. Businesses and private homes would not welcome fans flocking to their establishments disrupting business. I still had fun, seeing the town through Mercy's eyes and writing a bit of fan fiction.
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| Ed Hendler bridge, aka Cable bridge, is damaged by a troll in the book "Fire Touched", and later sunk by a Gray Lord (powerful fae). |
At the campground near Kennewick, I met Devin, a chatty boy that has a black and white cat, likes to bike, and takes a lot of photos with his phone. He nicknamed me the cat lady since I have a cat sticker on my car. His family comes to the campground every year for a week in their RV. Devin was very knowledgeable about different kinds of RVs, and they are his favorite way of camping. I did not get to say goodbye to Devin the day I left, though I was able to chat with his mom for a bit. That's one of the hard things about traveling, ya never know when it might be the last conversation you have with someone you meet. Everyone comes and leaves from the campground at different times and days. Much of the time, the first conversation is also the last conversation.
All in all, I enjoyed my time in Washington.
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