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Quinault on the South Shore Road

© Jerri Brooker

Last week we were in southeast Washington. Today I am in northwest Washington. Quinault, to be exact.

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Quinault, Washington, in the northwest corner of the state sits amidst the Quinault Rain Forest on the South Shore Road near Lake Quinault off coastal Highway 101. This little hamlet beckons tourists who come in droves to the vintage 1926 Lake Quinault Lodge, http://www.visitlakequinault.com/" , which once hosted President Franklin Roosevelt, or the Quinault Rain Forest Resort Village recently featured at http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/wash... .

On a recent trek we were deluged with record rain, over three inches in 24 hours. That didn't stop us, however, from hiking a bit of the surrounding area on the Olympic National Park Trail in the Quinault Rain Forest.

We left our Resort Village cabin and trekked past the Quinault Rain Forest Village RV Park where the Largest Sitka Spruce in the World resides. It's worth the jaunt off the road just to see this 1,000-year-old tree that is the third largest tree in the world. Unbelievable.

Then we crossed Falls Creek and a cemetery (some of the trail is on private lands) and headed to Gatton Creek Falls. We managed to hike between heavy rainfalls to see a beautiful, cascading, powerful falls worth the hike amidst the awesome moss-covered rain forest.

Shades of green-cradled forestlands and more big trees almost made me gasp, forest lover am I. If you haven't seen them, old growth trees are almost incomprehensible; they are so large and getting scarcer by the year as old-growth forests are logged.

The hike is very comfortable, less than a mile long; the park service has designated it a moderate hike. We did have to step over a log or two and we could see evidence of previously-fallen trees, freshly cut and pushed off the trail.

If you continue on the trail you will eventually reach the half-mile Quinault Rain Forest trail. Since I forgot to get the length of the entire trail and you may not want to hike that much, you have another option. Hike the half-mile trail across from the Lake Quinault Lodge.

One thing we noticed right away: the area had not changed much since we were there over 40 years ago! My husband was even able to remember fishing trips in the rain forest when he was a kid and it seemed everything was the same.

Back to the Resort Village.

The village consists of a motel, cabins, general store and the Salmon House Restaurant.

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