Today was the day that I saw the Pacific Ocean for the first time (on this trip) and turned to start heading south. The map and video are here.

The charmed weather that I had enjoyed during the first part of the trip has abandoned me for the time being and it was gloomy and wet as I made my way around Crescent Lake in Olympic National Park I stopped at several viewpoints to take photos and, despite the lack of visibility, I really like the atmospheric effect I captured.  Somehow the faded mountains look right in these shots in a way they do not when the sun is shining and it is haze that is hiding their magnificence. The first time it rained I noticed that the dash-cam was badly positioned with respect to the wipers because both blades passed in front of the camera on every sweep and one blade deposited water in front of the camera. However, I had not bothered to try to fix the problem as it had not affected anything scenic. Today was different and so I spent a soggy 15 minutes re-positioning the camera and rebuilding the anti-reflection and cooling channel that goes in front of it. I am somewhat pleased with the results but there is a strange, ghostly blob that now appears in the lower left of some shots that I have yet to identify and remove.

Talking of ghostly, take a look at the following picture I took at the next stop, the Hoh Rain Forest also in Olympic NP.Do you see a face just to the left and below the center of the picture? If not, try focusing your eyes beyond the screen so that the details go slightly out of focus. Let me know if the road is getting to me and I’m  imagining things.

The forest was beautiful but far less dense than I had expected. There were many gaps in the canopy due to fallen trees and the replacement trees leaned toward the light to such an extent that they also seem doomed to fall. The shot below shows some leaning trees and is not a trick of the perspective. I made an approximate measurement and some are growing at an angle of about 20° to the vertical. Moss is everywhere and must add a significant load on the trees.After spending an hour exploring the forest and the Hoh River I completed my westward journey with a sighting of the Pacific and turned to the south to drive to Hoquiam, WA. By this time the weather was much improved.