It takes a looooong time to get from here to there, but worth every step. Starts in a cab to the airport, plane from JFK to Seattle, car rental, a walk up the mountain… and then finally, peace. But also - what an adventure we had!
Hamma Hamma Campground
We spent the first night at Hamma Hamma campground, which we stayed in almost exactly to the day 10 years ago on our first visit to this delicious forest. A WONDERFUL Forest Service campground with 15 tent-only sites, and only half full. The campground hadn’t changed, but the forest certainly has. The entire area has seen record high temperatures and a severe drought for the last 2 years. The colors used to be almost fluorescent versions of green and the plants and shrubs were twice the size when we last visited.
Still, it’s huge. The ferns were as tall as me when we last saw this neck of the woods, it’s interesting to witness the change.
There is a forest fire currently in the Mt. Baker area - almost exactly where it was last year, and currently just 25% contained :( When we arrived, the wind was blowing from the north and we experienced the now familiar backdrop of smoke covering the distant mountains. This resulted in a state-wide campfire ban, which means yet another trip without campfires. This is an issue we have only had to deal with in the last few years, which is daunting.
Impossibly gigantic trees. Pics don’t do it justice.
Teeny, bobbing ouzels were everywhere. Soooo cute.
The sunset light coming through the thick forest looks like one of my paintings - can’t resist using it for my next series.
We love it here :)
Lena Lake trail
We threw ourselves into this trip with a 2-night backcountry hike to Lena Lake. We did this hike in 2013, and I remembered the pics I took back then. It’s fascinating to compare them and see how dry and shriveled the forest has become since a decade ago.
2013
2023
I was on the look-out for this tree stump with a face I saw 10 years ago and it was easy to find. What a difference to my eyes - the plant on top has become dead sticks and the ferns barely there. You can see how much of the thick forest cover has disappeared enough to see the trees in the background now.
2013
2023
I remembered this particular slice of the woods and took a pic of it 10 years later. It’s fascinating to see the difference in the 2 pictures. Such a difference in the colors!
We made it to camp in a couple of hours, but we were BEAT. I think we slept 12 hours that night. When you backcountry, you have to carefully ration your food, and I was STARVING but couldn’t eat more than a measly pack of mac and cheese and a granola bar. It takes a while to get used to that. You reeeeally appreciate food when you get back, especially snacks.
I can happily report: we saw and heard birds in the forest again! The last 2 trips we took, to Mt. Baker and the Siuslaw forest, were frighteningly empty of birds and rodents.
Yes, I bring my portable chair with me in the backcountry… It’s so small and weighs nothing but makes ALL the difference. These gorgeous roots aren’t comfortable to sit on hahaha.
We saw tons of different kinds of chipmunks, but this was our special little guy. We called him Smee coz one of his little legs was all limp and withered :( He also had a nasty growth on his side that he kept itching. A scruffy little lone birdie would often join him at our camp. We seem to attract the misfits haha.
Root siesta.
The next morning was Aaron’s 51st birthday! It was a great day, started by the sounds of a woodpecker. There are so many kinds out in this forest, and I love the way you can tell how big it is by the sound of the knock-knock-knocking.
The smoke from the fire was just starting to be replaced by the classic Pacific Northwest mountain fog. LOVE IT.
While the logistics of bringing some sort of birthday cake didn’t work out, I was able to sneak his present into my backpack. A GPS device! He loved it, and we were able to track wherever we were, which came in REAL handy in certain moments.
We spent the whole day making our way around pathless Lena Lake. It is a real optical illusion… when you’re sitting on one side of the lake, the logs and rocks on the opposite side look so tiny. But when you’re up close, the rocks are the size of small ships and the logs are, well, PNW trees. YUGE. It was so much fun, climbing around the rocks and finding our own path like children. A great way to spend your birthday :)
Teeny spider web with teeny droplets.
Gorgeous reflections.
2013
2023
The next morning we made our way back and I caught another familiar scene…
Hamma Hamma Campground Trail
And then it was another night in Hamma Hamma campground. It has an AWESOME 2 mile trail around the entire area, and even though we did a 2 hour hike down the mountain, we couldn’t resist another hike :)
Evening entertainment… This is the first chance Aaron has had to use his new camping chair I got him for Christmas. We love these chairs, so much better than sitting on rocks and hard ground. We’re old.
Campbell Tree Grove
The next day we headed out to the real wilds… Lena Lake was beautiful, but it also had a lot of people on the trail and a couple of families who camped overnight. Just knowing they were there kept us feeling like we were still, um, civilized. So we drove to the nearest big town (Aberdeen), drove another 40 miles down the paved road, and 17 miles down a rocky dirt road to get to Campbell Tree Grove campground. Our new thing is Forest Service campgrounds. We’ve stayed at a thousand of them and love them all. More often than not they are down a treacherous dirt road, they’re free or very cheap, no electricity, running water, or RVs, and if you’re lucky you’ll get an outhouse. This usually means they are empty haha. Sometimes they even have trailheads in them which is IDEAL. It’s like backcountry camping without the backpacks. I think this is what we’ll do from now on, as finding a safe dispersed site can be difficult, nasty, and we’re getting too old to be digging a hole to poop in. I cannot recommend this campground enough, it is one of my absolute favorites. BUT…
Damn it is WILD. Like, terrifying wild. There were no people for 40 MILES, 17 of that down a rocky road. Just us and Colonel Bob Wilderness. There are 11 tent-only sites, and only two were taken one night and one taken another night. I have never felt so close to wild animals - the trail was right in the campground and we could only make it about 1/2 mile before the hair started to stand up on our necks and we scurried back to the campsite. Be careful what you wish for… I was thinking up at Lena Lake that I wanted adventure but couldn’t feel it there. And then terror gripped me when I got what I asked for. One night in particular was so frightening that Aaron didn’t want to stay anymore. We were completely alone, which I don’t like either. If I scream, I want someone to hear me. And then at dusk, a van rolled up to the site next to us. That changed our entire perspective and we slept soundly that night. It’s funny how safety in numbers is so primal. We didn’t even know these people, but felt safer for their mere presence. And though the campground is huge and completely empty and the sites are so far apart you can’t see or hear anyone, I’m sure they chose to camp right next to us for a reason.
GIANT, gorgeous moss-covered trees. This place felt absolutely ancient. Pete’s Creek trail runs right through it. The site was ENORMOUS. Once we settled in, it felt different than any place I’d been. As if the birds and chipmunks (etc) don’t see people very often. This place is every bit as beautiful as Olympic National Park. We didn’t see a single soul on the trail the entire time we were there.
It’s gigantic. Me for scale, reaching for the moss hanging from the tree. Since we were now in the rain shadow, everything is much wetter, greener, and more lush. We started down Pete’s Creek trail, right behind our site.
It was here that we decided it was too terrifying. I can’t explain it, it just gave us chills down our spine to walk on this trail and round a corner and not know what to expect. It is UNTAMED. So we turned around and headed back to our site.
And there was plenty to explore at our amazing campsite.
The sign at the front of the campground looks to be from the 1970s haha…
The next day we tried the trail again… It’s just too lovely and mysterious to ignore.
It started to rain pretty hard… which is what this forest needs. And it sounded UNBELIEVABLE. Heavy rain on so many different surfaces. Magical. So we turned back. It rained on and off all day and into the night.
Quinault
The next day was our halfway point - time for a shower and non-dehydrated meal. I wasn’t as excited as usual, as this little piece of the forest is profoundly special to me. But onwards to the tiny town of Quinault. We couldn’t check in right away, so we went on a couple of hikes in the area. This was Merriman Falls, a small but beautiful waterfall right on the side of the road.
Aaron for scale. Then we went to get our backcountry permit from the ranger station. Behind the ranger station was, I kid you not, one of the most incredible trails I have ever seen. You don’t need to go into the National Park and see Hoh Forest, it’s all right here. STUNNING. And right on the side of the road. The most expressive trees I’ve ever seen.
And the SIGH, back to reality. Our little cabin on Quinault Lake was so cute and just what we needed. Though, the decor was super 1970s Three’s Company hahaha.
And the keys were actual keys!
There are the cabins in the background. Also, a great restaurant (seemingly the only one in town) right next door. After dinner, we brought our camping chairs out to watch the sunset. There were people from the hotel and restaurant milling about but when the sun really started to disappear behind the mountains, people RAN to the lake shore. It was such a beautiful scene of primal human behavior. I looked behind me and suddenly a dozen people appeared, oohing and ahhing. A couple sprang into a little dance, it was tear-jerking. To me - to Aaron it looked like the scene in 2001 when the monkeys were beating on the metal object. HAHAHA!
Graves Creek
Aaron found the most enchanting little Forest Service campground just 15 miles from Quinault. Of course, 10 of those miles are on a one lane, rocky dirt road that I almost got stuck on, but still… This is actually where the adventure got turned up a notch! It’s a 30 site campground, but no more than 7 sites were taken while we were there. And a nice trailhead right in the campground. PLENTY of wilds, to be sure. Just not quite as remote as Campbell Tree Grove, which was kind of nice. We had a perfect site with an elevated view of the creek behind our site.
As soon as we were set up, we hiked the Graves Creek trail. Beautiful!
Perfectly circular sinkhole on the trail. This place is like no other.
And then a walk back to the campground to explore the many, many things around our site. I love that it had a whole area above the creek at the back of the site, we spent all our time there <3
We were just sitting there doing nothing and I spotted what I thought must be a rock across the river. But it was moving! Oh boy it was a group of otters! IT IS SO HARD TO TAKE PHOTOS OF WILDLIFE, PEOPLE. Everything happens so fast. By the time you get your camera out they’re gone. While your camera is clicking, they dunk under water or hide in the trees. Sheesh. Here’s the best I could muster hahaha. Looks like a furry brown rock, but that’s an otter back.
Before I could even put my camera away, this gorgeous duck rolled up. What a creek!
The next day was rainy and VERY moody. The plan was to go closer to the National Park and find dispersed camping that we had looked up before we left. We were excited to see some of the places we saw last time we visited, and were prepared for crowds. It was unexpectedly disheartening.
As we drove out of Quinault on the way to the National Park, we were HORRIFIED. Every road we drove down was logged. Many places clear-cut, some places with 1 year to 10 year old “re-planted” trees. The re-planted trees are all SUPER close to each other (they grow faster that way) and are all one type of tree. This is not so much “re-planting” as growing inventory for the next clear cut. We know that this was all started after our visit a decade ago because none of the re-planted trees were even 10 years old. And we DEFINITELY didn’t see any of it, though we drove the exact same roads. I don’t know why we were shocked to the point of nausea and tears, logging has been going on in the PNW forever. But with all the forest fire devastation, it has become clear to me that stopping folks from having a campfire at a campground isn’t necessarily because they want to save trees from burning. It’s because they can’t sell burnt trees. Everyone loses. I can’t describe to you the endless graveyards of former ancient, mossy trees. Here is the scope of it. This is what it looks like around the last 2 campgrounds we stayed in. Lush and un-cut for miles.
Once you get on the 101 (the one main highway of the area) it’s a free-for-all. See those patches? Those are acres and acres of clear-cut forest.
If you don’t know what clear-cutting is, this is how it looks when they’re done. Not a single log left behind, let alone other plants and shrubs. It looks like they salted the earth.
They have even started eating at the Hoh Rainforest, the oldest trees in the National Park. This was absolutely not happening 10 years ago.
Even on the Indian reservations.
Up to the very edge of the National Park boundary.
Oh excuse me, I meant WITHIN the boundaries of the National Park. I naively assumed National Parks are off-limits. It’s like watching them drill for oil in the Grand Canyon.
Adding insult to injury, you have to drive on the road with hundreds and hundreds of logging trucks packed up with these gorgeous trees and on their way for processing. It’s like watching a holocaust. It really brought everything down. So, of all the dispersed camping we had researched, they were all on logged roads. One of them even had a prison on the road. So depressing and scary.
We gave up on dispersed and thought we would, just this once, go to a regular campground - only because one had a trail in the campground that we really wanted to backcountry. But that’s where the crowds come in… everything was booked solid. We didn’t mind that too much coz we couldn’t stand those parking lots of RVs with no space and hundreds of sites. Yuck. So we had to make a new plan, changing the whole rest of the trip to avoid this area altogether. We went back to our beloved Graves Creek.
We sat and cried a bit (well, I did) and it brought the good energy to a halt. Until Aaron went to the bathroom, and while he was gone and I was sitting by the creek - BOOM! A GIGANTIC bear walked down the edge of the creek on the opposite side of me. Obviously I couldn’t get a pic of it, it isn’t as easy as it looks. But I watched it walk all the way into the forest - it was the biggest animal I have ever seen in the wild. My entire body SHOOK. And Aaron wasn’t there :( It felt like an ETERNITY for him to come back so I could tell him. It was just me and that bear. I was very, very nervous that night knowing bears were definitely afoot. It’s different when you actually see one. Here is where I was sitting and circled is where the bear was. It being dusk added to the terror.
That night a bit more adventure… We were sleeping and then BOOM! Thunder! And lightning! I don’t like being in the forest when there’s lightning. But it looked really neat on the roof of our tent :) And in the morning? The otters came back. This time right on our side of the creek! And though Aaron was again in the bathroom when they came, he got back in time to see them :)
We decided to spend the day at Kalaloch Beach, even though it meant driving through the tree graveyards again. The beach was OK. I don’t like to see so many people, but was glad to finally see the ocean :)
And then the mind-bindingly depressing trek back home. Sometimes the logged forest patches are “hidden” by planting trees in a line by the road, but you can see it through the gaps.
And sometimes they’re just right out in the open.
Below you can see young re-planted trees in the background. All one species, all planted too close for underbrush to grow (So they grow faster. So they can cut them down again faster.) It looks creepy, like some kind of video game background.
We were happy to be back at Graves Creek, with its powerful old trees. When there’s no electricity in a campground and a full moon, the lighting is so eerie. I love the way a camera flash looks in a dark campground. This time around there were only 2 other campers there.
Campbell Tree Grove Campground, Part II
We couldn’t bear going back up north, we’re total city wimps. It’s too heavy a burden to witness. So we decided to spend the rest of our time in our precious Campbell Tree Grove campground. We were supposed to do a 2-day backcountry on a beach in an Indian reservation, but that would mean 4 hours driving through the graveyards and we just didn’t have it in us. We saw the National Park on our last visit, and have no problem sitting in the forest. On the way in, down the 17 mile dirt road, a black figure appeared before us in the middle of the road. A black bear! And Aaron was there to see it! It was a smaller one, and got scared and ran. This place is so chaotic in the most natural way. We opted for a different site this time. I was a sucker for that tree.
Then we decided to take the trail in the opposite direction. That was TERRIFYING. Another inexplicable feeling that you’re being stalked. We went for almost a mile and came across a VERY creepy part of the forest where all the birds started screaming their heads off. I felt like prey :(
SO godamn beautiful and wild, though. Dig this weird insect.
Untamed wilderness. Huge variety of trees, shrubs and plants with lots of space to grow slowly. The opposite of a “re-planted” logging patch. I have never felt such strong feelings for the trees, and that’s saying something.
We turned back because we are 2 scared babies haha. And walked to a clearing where we could at least see what’s coming. I took this gag pic and thought it would be so creepy if something happened to us and they found my camera and this was the last pic taken hahaha.
Beautiful curly tree. Hand for scale. That rock I’m holding I was using to bang on the metal hiking pole because you can’t see around corners in the thick forest and I wanted to let bears and cougars know we’re coming. It was lucky I had it because while we were scurrying back to our site - BOOM! I got bit by a wolf spider. It felt like someone held a curling iron to my leg. I killed it with the rock. The next 8 hours were agony :( But on the plus side, I wasn’t worried about animals on the way back and Aaron mended me up :)
I relate to this forest so deeply, we’re thinking about changing our wills and having our ashes scattered here. It’s wild and mean, but also beautiful and full of life. Both dark and light sides represented. Speaking of dark… the site we chose gave us both a BAD feeling. Again - can’t explain why. So we moved to the site next to it and that changed everything. We were the only ones there now, which is truly scary. This was the night Aaron wanted to leave, but then a car came in and our entire perspective changed. I’m so happy we stayed, I could spend the rest of my life here. The new site was huge, and we could see all around us unlike the other, more nestled site. Life was good, spider bite be damned :)
Hornet nest.
The next day, our last in the forest (waaah!) it rained and rained and rained. Our only day of constant rain. We feel so lucky that it wasn’t the FIRST day - made it a lot more tolerable.
Gearing up for a wet trail hike, nothing is as creepy as Aaron crouching under his rain poncho.
Nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands :)
Aaron’s shoes got soaked and I taught him the ol’ bread bags on the feet before you put the wet shoes on trick :)
On our last night it POURED, and our tent had an inch of water underneath the floor. Our tent is so awesome that it was bone dry. When you pushed your finger on the wet parts, it sunk at least a half-inch. I cannot tell you how happy we are that it happened on our last day rather than our first :)
A special shout-out to our new cooking setup. Since you can’t burn wood for a campfire or for cooking, but are allowed somehow to use a propane stove with a flame and clear cut forests… we got a new little camping stove. I love it. It’s so small, and works like a charm.
The dirt road out of Colonel Bob Wilderness :( Not FIVE MINUTES LATER a bear was on the road. I honestly didn’t know what to do, he was just standing and staring at us. I stopped, let him scurry into the woods, and drove slowly past. Exciting!