Scratcher of heads, rubber of bellies
I’ve always wanted to visit the Hoh Rain Forest when it was raining but so far it’s been dry on a handful of visits. I thought on this trip my luck was going to change as it poured rain while I was in Mount Rainier National Park and while hiking in Hurricane Ridge in Olympic National Park, but by the end of the trip when I was near the rain forests, we had clear blue skies.
It did make for a nice walk along Rialto Beach near sunset, I’ll give it that.
A dog’s footprints stretched out before me as I walked along Rialto Beach in Olympic National Park. They weren’t from my dog as Ellie was at home a state away, but my trip was nearing its end and soon enough we would be back walking side-by-side.
We finally got some much needed rain and I wanted to take a picture to celebrate it, but we also got high winds so I couldn’t take any macro pictures like last time. But when I took Ellie up to the dog park I saw this hole that had started to fill with water and it reminded me of another hole in the earth I like photographing, one from Yellowstone National Park (shown below). That one is one of the many geothermal features in the area and is filled with water from below, not above.
There are a few of these holes in the dog park, and since Ellie likes to run beside me in the park, I have to navigate around the holes so that neither one of us steps in one and twists an ankle (she watches me more than the way ahead, trusting me not to lead her astray). The parks folks fill them in occasionally but some dogs like to dig, so new holes always appear. They’ve been spreading sand at this end of the park the past few years and it’s a big help during the winter when rain is not hard to come by, as the sand drains well and it gives Ellie and I a safe area to run in. In the old days she’d still want to run out into the grass, but only one of us has a body built for running in such muddy circumstances, and these days even she isn’t quite as steady on her feet as age begins to take its toll.
I never imagined the dog park would remind me of my beloved Yellowstone so today’s visit made me smile almost as much as the goofball dog who waited patiently for me to take the picture, and of course expected a treat as her reward.
The colors of Hurricane Ridge on a foggy fall morning.
Beauty in the bark of an old tree in the Hoh Rain Forest.
Even in the late fall, with a minimum of moss as the rainy season is just getting under way, Wahkeena Falls is a beautiful place to be. The trail winds right in front of the falls so the spray of the water blows right over you, particularly refreshing after a day of hiking. Also a nice mental image at the moment, as even though it is only early July, Portland is in the midst of an unusual, and extended, heat wave.
Part of an old tree trunk, bleached by the sun, one of many that have washed ashore onto Rialto Beach.
Irrational numbers on the sands of Rialto Beach
From a distance Rialto Beach looks like an endless stretch of gray rocks. While walking down the beach my eye was initially drawn to a small red rock amidst the gray, and on closer inspection I realized there was a variety of sizes and shapes and textures and colors beneath my feet. One thing they share, though, is that the endless waves of the ocean that brought these rocks together has worn away their rough edges, leaving them different yet also similar, a whole greater than the sum of its parts.
A quick edit of an old picture to mark a historic day in my country. This was my first visit to Storm Point in Yellowstone and the trail lived up to its name. A brief but violent thunderstorm rolled through before yielding to the sun and an intense rainbow.
Boolie 