After a good night sleep in Tacoma, we drove all the way to Lake Quinault. The weather was nice and sunny, but some threatening clouds were always in the sight, trying to conquer the forests on the hills at the horizon. Unfortunately Lake Quinault was in their shadow and so was the world's largest Spruce Tree (18 m around, 58 m tall). The sun showed up later, when we were hiking - on the other side of Lake Quinault - to the world's largest Western Red Cedar (19 m around, 53 m tall).

The coast area was cloudy, foggy or misty - the semantics was pretty irrelevant for us. We stopped at Kalaloch Lodge, then ate lunch at Ruby Beach. We spent some time walking on the rocky beach - apparently there is not much else one can do even when the sun is not hiding.

As soon as we left the coast area, the sun showed up again and followed us into the Hoh Rain Forest area. We walked along the Hall of Mosses trail and learned that the clubmoss and the licorice fern are not parasiting the trees, but thrive on nutrients from air. Some of the biggest trees I saw in my life were standing or laying down on the Hoh River trail. I wish we had enough time to go all the way to the Blue Glacier and confirm the reason for the blue color of Hoh River.

Rialto Beach is apparently famous for beautiful sunsets. We got there about half an hour before the sunset, but the sun was either not aware of us waiting or very rude. Instead of the promised beautiful sunset we witnessed another combination of clouds, fog and mist.

• West Olympic
• North Olympic