Visit the Rainforests on the Olympic Peninsula

When the subject of rainforests came up in the past, I used to think of places like Africa, Central America, and, particularly, the Amazon River area. What never occurred to me was a place like the state Washington in the United States. My wife and I discovered, however, that Washington is home to two major rainforests, located on the Olympic Peninsula: the Hoh Rainforest and the Quinault Rainforest.

According to Wikipedia, there are two types of rainforests, tropical and temperate. Tropical rainforests are, as you might expect, located in tropical areas. Temperate rainforests are located in non-tropical areas, such as Washington State. For an area to qualify as a rainforest, it must receive a minimum of 68-78 inches of annual rainfall.

Our visit to Hoh and Quinault was the first rainforest experience for my wife and me and it was an educational experience.

Hoh Rainforest. The Hoh Rainforest is named for a Native American tribe that lives on the Olympic Peninsula. The rainforest receives 12 to 14 feet of rain each year.

On the day we visited the Hoh Rainforest, it was not raining and the sun was shining. I expected moisture to be dripping off the trees, but that was not the case. The forest was humid and hot, but nothing that we had not experienced during our years of living in Iowa and Minnesota!

The overwhelming impression for me was the mossy appearance of the trees as evidenced by the pictures that accompany this article. Visitors can follow well-marked loop trails through the forest to experience the variety of trees and other growth in Hoh. An interesting piece of information concerned so-called "nurse trees." A nurse tree is a tree that has fallen-whether from age or weather factors-and has become the seedbed for the growth of new trees and plants. A tree seed, for example, becomes embedded in the trunk of the fallen tree and finds nourishment there for its own growth. There are many such nurse trees scattered throughout both Hoh and Quinault.

Quinault Rainforest. Although the Hoh Rainforest seems to be the better known of the two rainforests on the Olympic Peninsula, a friend told us that Hoh was nothing compared with the Quinault Rainforest. My wife and I really had not planned to stop at Quinault, but we decided that we had enough time to work it into our schedule.

In many ways, there is little difference in the overall appearance of Quinault compared with Hoh. Both have trees covered with moss and both have many nurse trees providing the nourishment for trees that will perpetuate the rainforests. Something unique to Quinault, however, is the Kestner Homestead. An informational website notes that Anton Kestner and his family arrived in the area of the present Quinault Rainforest in 1889 and claimed some land under the Federal Homestead Act. The remnants of several buildings are still on the homestead, but there is no information about how long the family remained in the area or what happened to them. The Park Service is in the process of restoring the Kestner Homestead. As my wife and I hiked to the homestead area, we wondered why anyone would want to live in such a humid area.

We enjoyed our stops at both rainforests and would urge others to visit them, if for no other reason than to experience a kind of landscape that is not common in the United States.

Sources:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainforest

salliescollectibles.com/kestner_homestead_trail.htm

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