-----Our early mornings have finally become routine, I suppose, as we were able to get up bright and early in Forks. They call themselves the rainiest town in America, but regardless of that statement's truthfulness, it was sunny and nearly cloudless as we headed southbound.

-----Olympic National Park is massive, as it covers nearly the entirety of the peninsula. It gets multiple entrances and thus multiple visitor centers for its myriad natural wonders. We'd seen mountains and gotten top-of-the-world views on highways so named; what we were after in Olympic was something new. Something new came in the form of the Hoh Rain Forest, a remnant of one of the oldest and largest of the temperate rain forests that once spanned the western coast of the continent from southeast Alaska to California.

-----The road in was in good shape, and as we rolled through towards the park boundary, the trees got bigger. The average height for a tree in the Hoh is 220 feet, and many reach over 300 by the time all is said and done. By the time we parked, we were surrounded by a fairytale jungle.

-----The longest trail at the Hoh Visitor Center is one that takes overnight hikers 18 miles to the base of Mount Olympus, and it is a testament to how verdant and green everything is that it couldn't be glimpsed even in the clearings. Huge trees were everywhere, and where they'd fallen had provided fertile ground for new growth in a straight line. The forest floor was drenched in ferns, and I do mean drenched—one touch, and your whole hand would be soaking wet. The humidity kept the relatively low temperature in check; when it heated up, the bugs started to come out to play.

-----It was strange, walking around on these loop trails that go into natural "clearings" where the trees aren't quite as close together. Moss, wet as could be, hung down like loose locks of hair from every available hanging surface. On one occasion, the trail even curved underneath a tree that had naturally grown in an arch.

-----The Hoh Rain Forest is so named for the Hoh River, which—in the native tongue—means "swiftly flowing." That remains a very apt description, as its vibrant blue waters—icy cold, I'd imagine—rushed past, carving a path through the forest on both sides. There were a lot of cool spots on these trails, and we were able to take our time taking them in. It's the exact opposite of the sheer cragginess we'd come to expect while in Alaska.

-----Wildlife was scarce, as we didn't venture into the backwoods, but there had been bear and elk sightings in the area and we were keenly aware of our surroundings. None emerged, though we saw evidence of the bear and the unmistakable footprint of the elk. We did spot a black squirrel, a redheaded woodpecker (who really slammed his beak into the tree to dislodge significant chunks of bark), and a slug who looked, at first glance, to be a homeless banana.

-----Many more birds tweeted their way around the canopy, but they were too far up and too well-hidden to be seen. Coho salmon fry and tadpoles churned their way upstream in the extraordinarily clear waters of the Taft Creek that feeds the mighty Hoh. The creek had a bluish silt at its bottom, which we found fascinating. The canopy was so thick that, when it began raining as we made the return journey from these trails, we only felt a scant few drops.

-----We began making our way south to the famous Ruby Beach, where craggy rocks jut up out of the waters in a makeshift cove, but by the time we arrived, I was feeling quite sick. It wasn't what I'd had in Homer—my personal feeling is that it was just too much stomach acid and not enough food—but again, concerns over dehydration led us back north to Forks. Their hospital is older but there's not much going on there, which was to our advantage. I felt better after I got some IV fluids, but I had several anomalies on my blood work and they ran some extra scans. These all turned up negative, as expected, but did slow the discharge process. (The doctor there has driven the northern roads quite a bit and was very pleased to hear that we'd driven the Top of the World Highway. To quote him: "it's a great road, but not a lot of people even know about it.")

-----(By comparison, I did not really regain any sort of appetite from the Homer norovirus until we reached Dawson City four days later. This time, I was starving by the time we left Forks for the final time.)

-----By the time we were fully on the road to Olympia, I felt absolutely back to normal in every way. I was thankful for this, but at the same time, it struck me as extremely weird. My dad took us on the mountain roads down to Olympia, past utter walls of trees on either side and fields of wild forsythia. It was in the state capital that it got dark on us. This was extremely unpleasant, as we'd gotten so accustomed to the midnight twilight that we forgot how enormously confusing the roads can be when darkness falls.

-----We got turned around as we saw nothing but closed restaurants, and finally—when we got to our hotel—we were thankful that their in-house restaurant did not close for another thirty minutes. We looked like a mess, collectively, and we had to endure the loudness of a little-too-drunk collection of travel-baseball parents, but we got there in the nick of time.

-----I felt entirely normal but still wanted the lightest thing on their menu. When our waitress told us that they'd run out of chicken, as it was apparently slammed since they opened, the option for a light sandwich went out the window and the lightest thing on the menu became a steak. I ate about half of it as well as some potatoes which probably weren't all that great but that tasted great to me. (The meat did not go to waste, as I'd lopped it in two when I started and my dad wolfed down the other half.)

-----Tomorrow: east to Spokane.