For a desert rat such as myself, I found my first Olympic Peninsula rain forest to be disorienting, other worldly, over stimulating and just a tad frightful. Interestingly, Tom and I had driven through what would certainly qualify as 'rain forest'. But, to be in the bowels, the inner and most intimate part of a real rain forest is something difficult to describe and most certainly difficult to accurately capture with a camera. We got our beginner's start at the rain forest surrounding Lake Quinalt.
After our hike we drove back to the Quinalt Lake Lodge for lunch. It would compete easily with the old lodges at the South and North Rims of the Grand Canyon. Lunch was unremarkable and expensive.
We seem to meet photographers along these paths, stop and compare notes. We were told that the Hoh Rain Forest was very different with older trees and a more dense floor. We were planning on going there after we got set up in Forks, WA. We hoped we had learned a bit about photographing a rain forest, a foreign land for desert rats!