Thursday, August 15, 2013, Marymere Falls, Ancient Groves Hike, Olympic National Park, WA

Today we visited a few more of Olympic National Park's attractions along the north side entrances. We started by taking some back roads over to Lake Crescent, WA. We were surprised by how many private residences lined the shores of the lake, but then there was no National Park until 1938, so of course, there should be homes there. With the overcast conditions, the lake was pretty, but not very photogenic so we just enjoyed the drive.

We stopped at the Storm King Ranger Station and hiked to Marymere Falls. Even with the clouds, the woods were beautiful. 

Trail under US-101 on the way to Marymere Falls.

I made sure I had my tripod and remote release so I could bracket exposures for HDR processing. You will notice in the picture below I wore jeans and a coat - it was a bit on the cool side at 60 degrees.

Marymere Falls made a few of the top ten lists in Olympic National Park and it was less than a two-mile round trip hike - definitely worth the effort!  

That's Joani holding very still while I took three exposures for HDR processing. I'm not sure HDR worked well on this scene. The increase in dynamic range is offset by the increase in image noise.

Next, we hiked through "Ancient Groves" along the Sol Duc River. Most of the time we were the only ones on the trail. The beauty and serenity combined were amazing. I wish I could say we saw some Roosevelt Elk or deer in the woods, but the mushrooms were all we found.

David is dwarfed by the size of these trees.

The Salmon Cascades on the Sol Duc was another beautiful stop. The water was so clear and the boulders were worn smooth giving it a different look. There was also a lot of lichen providing some yellow and green coloring to the rock.

I like the way the pebbles gave David eyes!

We decided to stop in at Madison Falls again (that grueling 0.1-mile hike) to see how it would photograph on a cloudy day. We passed Lake Crescent and decided to snap a few pictures even with the clouds. You can see it was pretty, but not very colorful.

Pictures of Madison Falls were better without the extreme contrast of bright sun and deep shade. This would be nice to have in the backyard next to the patio don't you think?

On the way back to the car we stopped at this unusual tree for some pictures when we found a few slugs and this snail. I guess you can find something crawling around anywhere if you search closely enough.

Does this count as wildlife?