Hiking in the Rainforest

Did you know the United States has rainforests? The one I went to isn’t tropical like the ones in South America. It is a temperate rain forest located in the Olympic Peninsula of Washington State.  Ed and I went to the Olympic National Park to go hiking and camping through the rainforest. It rained the whole time we were there so it was a good thing I remembered my umbrella! On average, it rains 12-14 feet a year. While tropical rainforest are very warm and moist, the temperate rainforest is cool and in the summers the coastal fog drifts into the forest.

	The area has nurse logs scattered on the forest floor. Nurse logs are fallen trees that have lots of plants like moss, mushrooms and seedlings growing on them. As the seedlings grow into bigger trees, their roots reach the ground around the nurse log. When the nurse log eventually rots away, the growing tree will have stilt-like roots. Sometimes the roots are so tall you can walk under the tree!
I saw HUGE trees in the forest during my hike. Some of the largest recorded Western Hemlocks, Douglas-firs and Sitka Spruce trees grow in the Olympic National Park. There is even a valley called “Valley of the Rainforest Giants.” The tallest tree here is over 300 feet tall, so I can see where they got the name.