Quinault Rainforest & the Enchanted Valley

The beautiful landscapes others seldom see

Enchanted Valley is the place name of the valley in the Quinault Rainforest, part of the Olympic National Park. I took many smaller roads from the interstate and drove an hour without going through a town of any size. Humptulips, Washington, an intersection with a gas station and a convenience store, doesn’t count.

The Quinault Lodge and Lake and Rainforest are about equally distant from Seattle and Portland, about three and a half hours, depending on traffic. “Depending on traffic” means being backed up behind a slow-moving vehicle on the winding roads through the forest.

The distance isn’t great, but it’s probably too long for an easy week-end trip. The bigger problem is all the competing beautiful sites are within easy distance of either Portland or Seattle. I, who grew up on the plains, am amazed a place of such beauty has relatively fewer visitors.

The National Park

The Hoh Rain Forest, better known as part of the Olympic National Park, can have a one to three-hour wait to get past the National Park gate in the summer. We had reservations at a lodge on Quinault Lake, but drove to a campground at the end of the gravel road, just to look around. First-come, first-served national park campsites were available at 2 p.m. on an August Friday.

The Olympic National Park is not contiguous and is a huge park.

Low mountains surround Quinault Lake. The lake itself is owned by the Quinault tribe. Hereditary cabins, built before the 1938 Park designation, line the lakefront. Families own the cabins, but not the land beneath them, and they cannot be used as Air B&Bs.

Quinault Lodge is an old-fashioned park lodge, not as large or eye-opening as some other park lodges, but with an astounding view. Adirondack chairs line the veranda, and visitors overlook a long, sloping lawn where children throw bean bags at corn hole boards. Kayaks and canoes are available for rent.

Motorboats and fishing rights are controlled by the tribe.

The Enchanted Valley is lined with waterfalls in the spring, as snow melt tumbles down the sides of mountains to the Quinault River, a glacial-fed stream. In August, the dried river bottoms of cobbled, river-polished, and rounded stones show the rapid flow in spring. A few waterfalls still tumble over the rock faces.

The forest floors are covered with lady ferns, maidenhair ferns, and sword ferns. Alders predominate, and then evergreens. Trees are covered with velvet moss, and draped with hanging moss, which creates the sense of an otherworldly place.

Wildlife

On my first visit, an owl — either a barred owl or a snowy owl — flew across the gravel road. On this visit, a magnificent elk bull, his rack majestic, stared at us while we stared at him. Bees surrounded our car and he bolted — maybe he had disturbed a honey bees’ nest. The next morning as the fog dissipated I saw a herd of a hundred elk or so, females and their half-grown calves, and young bulls with little sprouts of antlers.

Had I seen the herd’s alpha male? Or is this herd too large, a combination of several harems?

As I age I love to immerse myself in places that are many hundreds of years old, reminding myself I am but a shadow passing through.

The manicured lawn in front of the lodge could be from 1930 or 2030. The marine cloud cover burns off in the afternoon — we are about 10 miles from the Pacific Ocean.

Lakes

I spent much of my life in Minnesota, where my ancestors farmed. It is the land of lakes, and I am a lake person. Maybe I will visit Lake Quinault again next summer, at the Quinault Lodge, and watch the children play at the corn hole boards and watch a small regatta of sailboats on the lake. I will see some other wildlife, unexpected, and visit the world’s largest Sitka spruce in the valley of giants.

I can be an old lady and enjoy the quiet life of a book or jigsaw puzzle, without the compulsion to hike or get on the lake, though that is available.

I feel like I should wear a long white summer dress and a large-brimmed hat with a white ribbon. I will be one of the summer people, in my lawn dress, from the past or from the future.

Iced tea and an Adirondack chair are the only entertainment I need.