A Sad Farewell

 Up at 4:18, we said a sad farewell to Andrea's old friends and my new ones. God bless them, they stumbled out of the sack for a good-bye hug at the crack of dawn. 

We rolled up to the ferry early, only to find out our ferry was fogged out.  We had to go down the road. I had being having some anxiety about this due to my vertigo, but I had my patch in place and ginger chews at the ready.

Thankfully, by looking at the yellow line beside the truck and holding a travel brochure on the side of my head so my eyes wouldn't wander to the churning water, I came through unscathed. Praise the Lord. 

Unfortunately, this ferry took us downstream so we had to make quite a trek around to the to Olympic National Park  and Hoh Rainforest. There are few temperate rainforests. I loved it, but it was different that what I expected.  I thought it would be sort of spongey, dripping and more flowers, but it isn't a tropical rainforest. I'm sure I found Tree Beard. The trail was packed dirt  or concrete mostly.  One area was packed dirt with rocks, some as big as fists, which I learned after picking myself up off the forest floor.  Alas, my glasses and camera were unscathed. I'm sporting some colorful knees this morning.  

This is a straight line of trees. An old tree fell and seedlings popped up along the length of it. So this mother tree feeds the line of babies on her back. And as happens, they aren't babies anymore.

Yes, I'm a tree hugger.

I surely believe this is the tree that trapped Pippin and Merry.

Very long moss.

And the trees are so, so tall.

These pictures are backwards.  This metered parking lot was new to me.  We waited in line to get in, maybe 20 minutes.  I just last night saw the alert on Yosemite saying it could take hours to just get through the gate. I'm not sure I'm up for that.

This picture was actually before the rainforest and we wouldn't have seen it if we hadn't had to come a different way.  The bluest water I have ever seen. 

I think we're still holding up okay.  Everything is really far and riding is tiresome, but that is the only way to get to see these places. Today is Mt. St Helen's and then the coast road. Each day, I'm still thankful and amazed at this beauty. The Creator used everyone color in the box of 64 crayons.