To celebrate Terri's 62nd birthday we drove up to Lake Quinault for the weekend.
It was raining, which seemed apropos for a rain forest. Terri immediately bought a rain coat and headed off to see the "world's largest" spruce tree. There appears to be some dispute about the world record since there are about 5 other trees in the Pacific Northwest that make the same claim. Terri wanted to see if this tree was larger than the one next to our bedroom at the Markham Farm. The one that if it ever fell would kill us in bed and flatten the house. That one.
A sign seen at the Rain Forest Resort Village says:
World’s Largest Spruce Tree
Lake Quinault is the “Valley of the Rain Forest Giants©” and the Big Spruce Tree at the Resort is one of them. The tree is the World’s Largest Spruce with a circumference of 58 feet, 11 inches, diameter of 18 feet, 9 inches and 191 feet tall for a total of 922 AFA points. A very large tree near Seaside, Oregon claims to be the United States largest spruce tree, it has 902 AFA points. The American Forestry Association declared them close enough to be CO-champions. But a little bigger is still bigger, sorry Seaside.
Afterwards we had a nice lunch of oysters at the old Lake Quinault Hotel, with it's echoes of FDR in the later 30's. A coincidence being that I was listening to Doris Kearns Goodwin's book Franklin & Eleanor at the time. Got me to wondering how FDR, as a sitting President, travelled to the Hotel. Long car trip from Seattle? Float plane landing on the lake? Wasn't a helicopter that's for sure. My guess is car trip. FDR loved taking car trips.
So with that thought in mind, Terri and I decided to take a car trip in the rain around the lake on a road that was last paved when FDR was President. This road was definitely not a shovel ready project for the latest stimulus package, that's for sure. We saw a herd of Olympic Elk basking in the rain and enjoying the fact that hunting season was over. With their luck and stealth, they had earned another year of freedom. The desire to protect the elk was one of the primary forces behind the establishment of the Mount Olympus National Monument (later Olympic National Park) in 1909.
Another name of the Olympic Elk is the Roosevelt Elk. Go figure. However they were rightly named for Teddy not Franklin.
Spenser and Melissa had given us a night at the Lake Quinault Resort for Christmas last year and we finally got around to using it. We were the only ones there for the night.
Later that night we went around to the other side of the lake to the Salmon House for many martinis, college football, and dinner. The Ducks of Oregon gave Terri their only defeat of the season as a birthday present. She was just thrilled.
