temperate rain forest.

1. the first huge tree we came across during our day trip to the quinault rain forest. a rain forest in washington, you say? it is temperate. not tropical, silly.
2. gw, from his command post.
3. to the left is a beautiful stream, full of fallen trees and ice cold water.
4. the kids were enthralled. and so was i.
5. we found a hollow log. what would you have done?
6. the moss is pretty thick. by any standards.
7. i spy cw.
8. a gigantic tree, to say the least.
9. i love the self timer. we got off the trail a little to take this one.
10. still going strong. after all these years.
11. this was really cool. a tree that falls in the forest and serves as a food and life source for another tree is called a nursing tree. once it decomposes the tree above it will look like it is on stilts.
12. the roots on this tree were enormous. enormous.
13. mw looked little sitting on trees like this. they were all covered in moss. cw was very cautious when walking on them. aw and bw threw caution to the wind, per usual, and flew across them.
14. the tree lying horizontal in the picture is the tree from photo 13. mw is standing on a tree that fell across it. it was cut where you see the marks and two other times where it covered the trail.
15. gotta love bw.
16. the demolished roots of a tree that looks as if it fell over yesterday. i said to mw, "can you imagine how loud that must have been when the wood split?" and he replied, "maybe it wasn't loud at all. if a tree falls in the woods and no one hears it, does it make a sound?"
17. mw swung bw between the split remains of the tree from photo 16.
18. i stood on the ground and took this picture looking up. i had to zoom to get this close.
19. another fallen tree split to clear the trail.
20. cw.
21. aw.
22. and bw. we have developed a new standard for measurement.
23. down the road from the trail we found the largest spruce tree in the world. 58 feet around. over 1000 years old.
24. this tree was gnarly and weird.
25. it just kept going, up and up and up.
26. the roots were gigantic.
27. you couldn't get far enough away to get the whole tree in the picture and still make out faces.
28. gw made it out of the backpack for a few photos on the short trail.
29. he toddled slowly along.
30. he stopped to touch all the plants. he fell head first into this one.
31. dad and gdub.
32. doesn't every family have a photo like this? at some park entrance?
33. notice my children are barefoot.
34. what a blessed little family we are.
35. no adventure would be complete without mw urinating on the majesty that we have recently enjoyed.