The Spectacular Pacific Northwest

Waking from my slumber on the flight between Dallas and Seattle, I lift my window shade and glance outside. I'm greeted by a sight I haven't seen for seven long months - mountains. But this is not some small hill; it's Mt. Rainier, a huge peak, over 550 m taller than New Zealand's tallest, Aoraki (Mt. Cook). An intense feeling of excitement instantly takes me over. My heart starts beating faster, breaths become heavier, and it feels like a kaliedoscope (yes, that's the correct term) of butterflies have been let loose in my stomach. Before delirium sets in I try to remind myself that this is just the first of many awe-inspiring sights I'll be seeing over the next month.

My ultimate destination is Juneau, Alaska, where I'll be spending a little over three weeks helping to teach and conduct small research projects with a group of LSU undergrads who chose to spend the summer semester studying somewhere other than hot and humid Baton Rouge. Of course, it won't be all work - we intend to have a pretty good time while we're up there too!

But before I arrive in Juneau, I had a couple of days to tour around Seattle and its surrounds. I spent Tuesday evening downtown, walking along the waterfront before launching up the famous Space Needle to view the awesome sunset. The city kind of reminded me of Auckland, with the downtown area being built on steep hills beside a harbour. But I wasn't really interested in the city so much during my short stay here, rather I wanted to check out Olympic National Park, home to the mountain ranges behind which the sun was setting.

I rented a car and decided I would drive around the entire Olympic Peninsula loop, around 1000 km total. So the next morning I took a ferry across Puget Sound and promptly started my adventure by getting lost. Luckily it wasn't for long thanks to Google Maps, and soon I had made it to the first stop of many, the spectacular Hurricane Ridge. This spot provided beautiful panoramic views of the Olympic Mountains and also into Canada. I climbed to the highest point the walking tracks nearby would allow, stood there, and took it all in. The mountains weren't as singularly breathtaking as Mt. Rainier, but there were so many that it more than made up for it. My next stop was Lake Crescent, where I walked a couple of kilometres to check out a waterfall, before cooling off with a swim. The water wasn't even that cold and I could stay in for a few minutes!

One of the greatest things about Olympic National Park is the variety of landscapes and ecosystems it contains. Within little more than an hour of driving you can get from the top of Hurricane Ridge to the coastline, and I spent the evening checking out the many beaches on offer. Rialto Beach and Ruby Beach were the most picturesque, with towering sea stacks housing their own forest communities, trees dead from sea spray lining the forest edge, and the shoreline littered with giant logs washed ashore during storms.

The forests in the park are also extremely pretty, filled with spruces, cedars, firs, hemlocks, and maples, all clothed in dense swaths of hanging moss, with an understory dominated by ferns and other small trees and shrubs. Photographs can't convey just how green and lush the forests are, especially on the west side of the peninsula, where they are classified as one of the world's few temperate rainforests (another being New Zealand's west coast hardwood forests). Hoh, Sol Duc, and Quinalt forests were all particularly pretty, and I spent a few hours wandering their many trails.

Wildlife highlights included a big black bear (actually outside the park), a herd of elk, some black tailed deer, lots of large and colourful slugs, the discarded skin of a garter snake, a single bald eagle, and what I think were a few sea otters playing in the surf. Other than the different species of flora and fauna, the whole park bore a striking resemblance to many places in New Zealand. The mountains made me think of the Southern Alps, Lake Cresent looked just like one of the Nelson Lakes, the beaches were as wild and rugged as those on the west coast, and the rainforests may as well have been taken right out of Lord of the Rings. It was a great feeling to be reminded so much of home.

Today begins the three day ferry trip to Juneau, where more exciting new adventures await!