on the oregon side of the columbia river gorge, multnomah falls plunge 188 m (620 feet) down. a bridge at about a third of the height gives a neat view between the two parts of the waterfalls. a hike to the top of the water flow is about 2 km (1.25 miles) long, quite a steep hike but doable and rewarding.
apart from the columbia river, the pacific is a great place to see. i am told there a many of these little hidden, rugged bays along the coast. this one is close to the lewis & clark interpretive center at cape disappointment. the interpretation center requires a fee (i forgot how much) but it can easily take you a couple of hours to follow the excruciatingly strenuous trail of meriwether lewis and william clark until they found the ocean at the spot where the museum is now built.
from the point of the light house at cape disappointment you can see the ocean and how the columbia river flows into the pacific. a cloudy sky is often your companion in washington, i dubbed it the permacloud that says hello almost every morning.
from water to fire. a feature of washington geology that i have been particularly excited about is the volcanic activity. germany has a row of dormant volcanoes (as i have to admit i just learnt recently, as the saying goes you learn more about your home country being abroad) and some hot springs but i never got to see their signs. unfortunately, also the model volcano of washington, mount saint helens, has been hiding from me in fog and clouds for most of the time during my visit. but the landscape around the volcano is pockmarked by remnants of previous lava flows. this year marks the 30th anniversary of mt. st. helens latest violent outbreak which killed 57 people.
so, spiting the fog we followed the traces the volcano has been leaving us. the photo above shows where a tree used to live; it's part of the short board walk trail of two forests. the flowing lava set the stem on fire, burnt the whole tree, and turned the empty holes into what looks like wells when the lava stones cooled.
holes like these show glimpses into more horizontal lava tubes. after the lava was cooled on the surface by the air, its hot parts kept flowing inside creating tunnels of different sizes. by the way, the light green plant layer covering most of the area like a fine net is lichen [Flechten].
as for the tubes, you can even crawl in them...
...on knees and hands and in parts waddling like a duck. at snail's pace we worked our way through a few meters of tight tube.
the light of the exit was always there. in contrast...
...to the big gaping mouth of ape cave. after the entrance a succinct warning sign is the last human feature before the everlasting darkness begins.
choosing the easy trail it tooks us about an hour and a half to stumble along it. in the hope of an exit at the end we climbed down a couple of boulders, stepped into many puddles and flashlighted our way along on fist sized rocks. alas, no exit awaited us but an asymptotic like narrowing of the tube. the diagonal size ranges from a few meters to around ten meters at least. the utter darkness is only disturbed by the little lamps and glowing sticks of the tourists.
from caves to snow-capped mountains. olympic national park allows you to drive up to about 1,500 m (5200 feet) on hurricane ridge. another part of the forest around mount olymp features half a dozen glaciers, reachable after at least a dozen miles of hiking. we decided to let the car climb for now. in the morning fog filled valleys wafted around the tall and straight fir forests.
we didn't even want to reach so high. in fact it as the fault of a cul de sac at night. what we were actually after was a rain forest. it's not a tropical but a temperate rain forest but definitely a natural feature that germany doesn't have to the best of my knowledge.
the height and circumference of the trees is bigger than i have seen before. sure, there are th gigantic big sequoia trees and the redwood forest in the united states, too. but neither of them i have visited (yet). what's unique to the hoh rain forest is that everything is covered in moss, lichen, leaves, ferns, shrubs.
the bid cedar develops from a twisted root structure into about half a dozen big trunks dwarfing any human.
curtains of moss and lichen inhabit every branch...
...and object in the forest.
this was just a cursory journey through the natural riches of the other washington, the state that is. it sure is different than the groomed and urbanized coast on the east around dc and the beginning rolling hills of appalachia in south east ohio.
and there is more: the hot springs, mount saint helens itself, the pumice plain, and the columbia river gorge.
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