In early October, we took a trip down from Port Townsend, along the west side of the Hood Canal, on the Olympic Peninsula of WA. The Hood Canal is a fjord that separates the Olympic Peninsula from the Kitsap Peninsula, all on the west side of Puget Sound. The Olympic Peninsula is home to the Olympic National Park and National Forest. US hwy 101 runs along the western shore. We followed this route from the town of Quilcene to where the Hood Canal does its bend toward the town of Union.
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The mountains in the Park are a source of abundant rainwater feeding the rivers flowing east into the Hood Canal, such as the Quilcene, Dosewallips, Duckabush, Hamma Hamma, and Skokomish Rivers. The National Forest and a few WA state parks offer trails that are dog-friendly which makes this side of the peninsula attractive to our dog-centric family.
Lake Cushman is a reservoir near the town of Hoodsport, on the North Fork of the Skokomish that provides power to Tacoma. One of our hikes was the Dry Creek Trail along the upper shore of the lake. Since it was fall, after the dry summer and before the winter rains, the lake is at its lowest levels. The stumps that are usually below the water level were our not-so-scenic view of the lake. There was a lot of fall color in the forests across the way. An interesting thing about the stumps is how big they are (which the photo below does not really convey). A few are hosting new trees from their tops and, zooming in, one can see the springboard notches on some of the stumps where loggers could wedge a board to stand on to cut the straighter trunk above the flared base. Those were big trees!
The trail offered wildlife. It seems that it was migration time for the Rough-skinned Newts. There were probably a hundred that we encountered crossing over the trail. These newts are toxic. They contain tetrodotoxin - the same poison as the Blue-ringed octopus of Australia and the Pufferfish. One rough-skinned newt divided up and eaten can kill 17 people. I can't imagine deliberately eating one, but it's important to wash hands if you touch one so you don't get the toxin into your mouth by accident. I was nervous about the dog who stepped on one before I really noticed them on the trail. But he showed no signs of being interested in tasting or even sniffing one and, after he walked though a good number of mud puddles, I hoped there was no toxin on his paws.
A quick stop at Dosewallips State Park was rewarded with more wildlife sightings. There were a lot of ducks, geese, and gulls visible from the viewing platform. The tide was coming in fast, so we could not walk out into the delta to get a closer look. The river was a place of great activity — full of spawning salmon.
I could not get a convincing photo of the fish because of glare on the water. But helpfully, an eagle gave us a view of one salmon pulled up out of the water. Unfortunately, it wasn’t a whole specimen anymore. Good eating for eagles!
A short drive up the Dosewallips Road leads to the trail head for Rocky Brook Falls. The falls is impressive, falling 229 feet in a tiered horsetail type waterfall. The fall colors in the gorge made it especially spectacular.
A waterfall like this just screams out the possibility of being home to a Dipper. We always spend extra time at creeks like this searching for the motion that gives away the little gray bird on the gray rocks. And sure enough, there it was.
A bit later, it hopped up on the rocks with white water in the background. Here’s a video:
YouTube Video