Enchanted forest

I have always wanted to visit the Black Forest, to see first hand the inspiration of Faerie Tales. For me though, I will never again think of an enchanted forest without picturing the Maple Glade in the Olympic NP near Lake Quinalt.

The rain forest was different here, the giant firs and spruce were accompanied by maples which were coated with moss. The sun was shining today, making the ethereal wood even more magical, and lighting up the hanging moss. Everything was green and gold, even in February. We saw a deer grazing on the other side of a stream, and she paralleled our course for a while, always pretending to ignore our presence. It was something out of my favorite fiction. We half expected to be challenged by faerie folk riding giant dragonflies or eaten by dinosaurs.

If I ever go missing, you can find me living in the hollowed out base of the giant cedar, living off toadstools and faerie dust.

-- Post From Sara's iPhone

Location:Olympic rain forest

Wildlife

I like waking up on the West Coast. It feels like I'm sleeping in but the clock says I have the whole day ahead of me. We started driving north today, because what Olympic journey is complete without spending some time in the Olympic National Park. Last night it was raining but today the sun came out. We went hiking in the rainforest and took pictures of the light filtering through the masive trees and prehistoric ferns and moss.

We have been here before. Almost nine years ago we spent our honeymoon admiring giant firs, waterfalls, nurse logs, and wildlife. Today we felt about nine years yonger as we reminisced about that trip.

We are naturalists at heart. We name trees, identify birds, admire mushrooms; all we need is a heavy dose of khaki to make it official. As naturalists we succeeded today, in addition to seeing the worlds largest spruce and some interesting bracket fungi, we also saw the following wildlife:

Black Bear
Herd of Roosevelt Elk
Deer
Two Bald Eagles

One of the highlights today was the roadside Merrimam Falls that was spectacular from the recent rain.

We are staying in a lake view room at the Quinault Lodge. Franklin Delano Roosevelt stayed here in 1937 while deciding if Olympic National Park should be founded. Luckily he enjoyed the area just as much as we do. We witnessed a beautiful sunset over the lake before an amazing dinner at the lodge's Roosevelt Restaurant. Salmon served on a cedar plank and yummy pork chop with banana foster and white wine poached pears for dessert.



View from our room.

-- Post From Sara's iPhone

Location:Quinault Lodge

Polson's in WA

For the third time in my life I passed the Polson Museum today. And for the third time it was closed. I had actually looked ahead and knew that it would be, but I still had hopes that their website was wrong.









It is a beautiful home (from the outside at least) which was apparently the base for the families logging operations in times past. I have mixed feelings, being very interested in history of the family and of the very important role the lumber industry played in the history of this area, but at the same time sad at the role they played in removing the old growth rainforest which is now relegated to only a few valleys in this area. Knowing that my great grandfather was a lumber man in NC does also make me wonder about how closely related we may be . . . Perhaps some cousin struck out for new experiences as the old growth forests dwindled in the East.

In any case we continued to see evidence of the influence of Polson's on this area including a logging road that we followed called Polson Camp Rd.

For a family name that is relatively obscure, it was very exciting to see!


-- Post From Shawn's iPhone

Location:Hoquiam, WA

Vancouver 2010

And we're off... After the obligatory last-minute fretting and sleep deprivation we have managed to start our trip off 18 hours early.









We left Chicago just as the snow started falling and I imagine it is snowing at home by now as well. I have a conference in Portland next week, so that's where our flight is heading. Btw, Portland is a balmy 52 degrees at last report.

On the agenda for tonight:
-Sit in limb-compromising, contorted positions with tray tables in our laps for seemingly endless hours.
-Fume at guy in front whose seat is reclined twice as far as is normally possible.
-Rent a car.
-Check into hotel.
-Complete poster for conference (maybe).
-Collapse on bed.

-- Post From Shawn's iPhone

Location:37,000 feet above Mt Rushmore

Halifax

Our first day in Halifax was largely spent resting and catching up on laundry. We did get out for a few hours to explore. We made our way up the large hill that dominates the downtown landscape. Halifax is and has long been a major port for Canada due to it's large, ice-free harbor. To protect this resource a series of citadels have occupied the top of this hill.

The next day we went to the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic, which had hundreds of ship models of every kind. There were also special exhibits on tug boats, the Titanic, and the Halifax Explosion. The Halifax Explosion occured in 1917 as a result of a ship collision with another vessel carrying war time explosives. 2000 people died and 9000 were injured. It remains the largest man-made accidental explosion to date. The exhibit was both interesting and tragic.





While in Halifax we wandered around the Public Gardens, heard bagpipes play, walked around the university, and drank in an Irish Pub. We relaxed and reflected, and tried to prepare ourselves for returning to our lives back home. We are going to miss the Maritimes and there is a part of us that wants to stay. But the part of us that misses our pets and realizes that vacations are less fun without a source of income won out, so tomorrow we return home.




Thanks for traveling with us!


-- Post From Shawn's iPhone

Route Overview

Just a map to put things in perspective.

Here's where we drove:

View Directions to Halifax, NS, Canada in a larger map

Zoom and pan around the map to make labels show up. Hope that helps things make more sense . . .

~Shawn

Fundy Fossils

July 11 and 12

This morning we awoke to an excellent breakfast of blueberry pancakes. We met several other people staying at Fitzroy hall and for the first time encountered Americans, two groups actually. Also for the first time on this trip I fielded a question about what I did, and breakfast turned into a quasi-lecture as an obviously fascinated guy from Maryland peppered me with questions about my work and going down in Alvin. It has been really nice to completely not think about work for a while, but I find myself newly energized to think about it now.

After breakfast we left Charlottetown and Prince Edward Island heading toward New Brunswick and the Bay of Fundy. Bay of Fundy is world famous as having the highest tides on Earth, an average of 35 feet with a record high of over 55 feet. We began at Hopewell Rocks Provincial Park where we watched the tide come in and even hiked down to the beach (otherwise known as bottom of the bay) and watched the waters quickly rush in. We then headed down the shore to the national park where we hiked a couple of trails and took an “auto trail”.

We stopped over again at the Residence Inn in Moncton and set off Sunday morning to explore the other (Nova Scotia) coast of Fundy. Fundy has played a very important role in paleontology and development of biological theory. The Bay is a rift formed as Africa and North America separated and very nearly severed the mainland of Nova Scotia from New Brunswick, but not quite. It is actually this long tapering shape, which is responsible for the high tides. It also exposed sheer cliffs on each side exposing the geologic and fossil record.

Our next destination, Joggins Fossil Cliffs (a UNESCO world heritage site), is the site where Charles Lyell and Richard Dawson did their groundbreaking work which formed a cornerstone of key theories developed and supported by Darwin, Huxley, Wallace, and others. This may sound boring to the non-biologists out there, but for a biologist this is a very special place. It was also very special as there were so many fossils just sitting on the beach waiting to be discovered. The high tides turn over and erode away new material every day, so this is an endless treasure trove of fossils. A highlight of our trip!

We continued our trip along the Fundy shore, visiting the Fundy Geology Museum where numerous fossils including pieces of the Burgess Shale are on display. Had a dinner and a wonderful butterscotch pie on the water, then continued to our final stop: a three night stay in Halifax. It has been great touring around, but we are both looking forward to sitting in one place for a few days to recover before heading home.

~Shawn