There are times I miss being in the Pacific Northwest. Your lovely travelogue was a brief bit of wayback happiness for me, Gerard. Thank you.

What about Sol Duc Falls?

Oy !

You've made me homesick again.

After 3 years at Ft. Lewis in the infantry, I got real tired of the rain.

'Cept above 4k ft or so, it will be snowing

That's the beach my grandpappy hiked to get to work. During the Depression, and before Hi 101 linked the west side. You heard me. He hiked from about La Push, to Hoquiam, on the beach. Back and forth, to work.

The Olympic Peninsula is a hard place for hard people.

Oh, Gerard. Everyone who grew up in West Seattle knows that the water tanks (509 feet on 35th SW) are higher than Queen Anne (447 feet near the old high school). /snark off

I did enjoy your pictures of the Olympic Peninsula and will try to get out there again soon.

t'anx

The staffer turned to me and said "Seattle liberal greenies may love Patty, but not the good folks in Forks. She's cost hundreds, maybe thousands of timber people their jobs."

More reason that all statewide offices (Governor, Lt. Governor, and US Senators) should be chosen by counties. Each county gets one vote. If you win the popular vote in a county you get it's vote. Whichever candidate carries the most counties wins the office. Think of it as an electoral college for the states.

Since US Senators represent the entire state, then each county should have the EXACT same vote as every other because otherwise, the US Senators just become Representatives-at-Large for the biggest metro areas in the state.

This would also force each candidate to actually campaign in each county and let the people see if that person is worthy to hold public office. It also has the added benefit of not having to repeal the 17th amendment to the US Constitution because the people are still choosing their US Senators.

Seattle - I spent a week there one night. Very nice pictures.

Mighty fine piece. You do know how to tell a tale of travel that illuminates so much more than just the geography.

Ah Gerard, Lived in Moclips for two years in the early 70s. The Wild Pacific. Next trip make time for an overnight hike up the Quinault River to the Enchanted Valley [summer only]. It's close to Eden.

What a wonderful field trip! Thanks for taking us along. Lake Quinault Lodge has been offering deals and I think it is time for a family foray to the Olympic Peninsula.

I love the whole peninsula and know it well..heck, I even like La Push and Moclips...we got stuck in the mud in Moclips one night in the 70s and had to be towed out in the morning. It was great. haha

Knowing that things you think you know, are not always what they seem …

A critical examination of just the picture provided with this article: It would appear that all the flat land has already been logged, and is a mix of clear cut and new growth. Only the steepest mountain slopes within the park retain the characteristic dark-green old-growth hue.

MIght it be, that a significant contribution to the decline of logging towns, is that all the good easy stuff is gone? It is nature of boom towns to become ghost towns, and then slowly to become something else. Poli-f'ing-ticians are just the noisy b******** riding on top of the bus of history and economics and Nature, making lots of noise about how they're doing the driving. The only real job of pft's is to take out the trash, keep the place picked up, and make sure that the guardians at the gate have everything they need to keep the peace.

People living in a boom town are always going to be quick to blame somebody else. Fishermen and loggers are all alike: left to their own they won't stop until they've made a desert of the place. It's just another manifestation of bubble psychology: get it while the getting's good, we'll deal with tomorrow's famine tomorrow.

We are reasoning beings. We do not have to suffer the fate of lesser species, bound tightly to the ecologic cycles of boom and bust. We can plan for the future, we can act now to achieve a desired future result, we can forego the pleasures of the instant for the joy of a life well-lived.

Then again, reason and intelligence may not be all the are cracked up to be, they may not be a valuable attribute for an evolutionary successful species.

What is this? Is it a poem? A song? It is beautiful.

John...perhaps you're not aware that trees grow?

The decline of the logging industry in the Pacific Northwest was rigged by the claim that the Spotted Owl could only exist in old growth forests. So, the Spotted Owl was listed as "endangered." The rest is history. We now find Spotted Owls living quite happily in second or third growth forests. The danger to the Spotted Owl is another owl, the Eastern Barred Owl, which is moving to the PNW. Basically, the death of logging in the PNW is a man-caused disaster.

Beautiful. I lived in the rain for 4 years. As I was born and bred in the desert, it was just too gray for me. But, it sure is beautiful.

Beautiful. I lived in the rain for 4 years. As I was born and bred in the desert, it was just too gray for me. But, it sure is beautiful.

Beautiful. I lived in the rain for 4 years. As I was born and bred in the desert, it was just too gray for me. But, it sure is beautiful.

Beautiful. I lived in the rain for 4 years. As I was born and bred in the desert, it was just too gray for me. But, it sure is beautiful.

I promise, I only hit post once. Sorry.

"La Push is an indian village and like most of these sad places, seems determined not to let money from casinos work against decades of squalor."

I found out something very interesting in regards to this in general lately. It turns out that though native tribes theoretically have sovereign lands, those lands are actually administered by the US in a byzantine fashion that includes equal dispersal of all lands to all progeny—which means that any given member of a tribe may "own" a fractional amount of the reservation, but there are no clear titles anywhere. There's also the numerous regulations that have to be followed for any improvements or management—the example given (for a land-use permit) was something like 24 steps and three years versus 6 steps and a few months for non-tribal land, which is why most businesses avoid tribal lands like the plague.

So it's entirely possible that the money is there for improvements, but the process of getting it where it needs to be is so difficult and labor-intensive that it gets spent elsewhere from sheer exhaustion.

"And there I sat until, as it will, the last light came and got me."
-my favorite sentence, but I was already smiling when I arrived there.

I have lived with and beside the local Indians for lack of a better term, most of my life. Believe me, they do not worry about the exterior of the home unless they are very assimilated into white point of view. It doesn't mean they are necessarily "slobs". Its just a different trip.

I have lived with and beside the local Indians for lack of a better term, most of my life. Believe me, they do not worry about the exterior of the home unless they are very assimilated into white point of view. It doesn't mean they are necessarily "slobs". Its just a different trip.

Man, you are a poet in prose and picture. Excellente. I do appreciate the Pacific Northwest. Some of the best years of my life were either in, or near, Portland Oregon (a few blocks away from Beverly Cleary's neighborhood.) Thanks.

My youth was spent hiking the trails of the Olympic Peninsula through the craggy glacier field then beyond to the wild flower meadows and finally the snow covered peaks. Walking along the ridge of the Olympic Mountains I was the happiest person on the planet. A young girl that did not dream beyond the views of Puget Sound. Content with the accomplishment of reaching the sky.

Made the Olympia pen. circuit twice in the '90s. Best spot by far was Cape Flattery. Utterly un-touristized and totally spectacular. Worst stop was La Push. Biggest mistake was staying overnight in a La Push cabin. Hoh rain forest was worth a stop, but not worth the hours-long walk-through we did.

First of two comments: re the Pacific beaches at Kalaloch and elsewhere. Please do not let your children (or yourself) succumb to the temptation to clamber over the huge driftwood logs that lay on the beaches. They are deadly. A slightly larger than normal wave can cause these unstable monsters to roll and crush or drown the unwary. Stay away. I am not joking.

Second comment - Washington politics: the few of you from outside of Washington State who may have heard of the Oso landslide may wonder why a natural disaster that killed 42 people and wiped out a whole subdivision has not resulted in any media appetite for a "scandal" or bad guy among the many layers of politicians and bureaucrats who arguably had responsibility for the public's safety. The answer is simple.

At the time of the tragedy, from the local aldermen to Mayor to State rep to State senator to State dept of natural resources to State dept of public safety to national offices of the same, to US Rep to US Senator to VPOTUS to POTUS, there was one essential ingredient missing from the recipe necessary to create a media frenzy in search of a villain. A Republican.

It was Democrats, as they say, all the way down.

I have heard that the local Dogcatcher may have been a Republican, but he apparently left town as soon as the landslide occurred, knowing full well who the Seattle Times would come after.

Legend has it, the Hells Angels came up Hwy 101 on a road trip, as far north as Forks back in 60's. They returned back south in worse shape than they arrived.

Twenty years ago I spent an afternoon sitting in an Adirondack chair in front of the Lake Quinault Lodge. It was one of the best four hours of my entire life.

My family pioneered on the peninsula, and are well known in the deeper parts. My father knew Christie Rixon (Mount Christie), Mrs Huelsdonk (of Iron Man fame), and I think he said he knew Dodwell, too.

I spent many days combing every corner of the mountains and beaches of the Olympics. When I went to college in the Seattle area, I thought I'd moved to the sunbelt. My friends wondered why the endless gray winters never depressed me.

Dad was one of 13 kids, and his parents immigrated from Germany to get as far West as they could. All 7 brothers served in war (WWII and the last in Korea because of the Sullivan rules).

If you show up in Forks from Seattle, you have a smell and a look about you. Keep in mind that loggers are overfed and well muscled, too. This is the sort of town where you face the door and keep your buddy, or the wall, to your back. Only saying.