Salamander

We went to the local forest in search of mushrooms and found this beauty. My hand is here for comparison.
Пошли мы с Дашей в лес по грибы, а нашли саламандру. Вот такую большую - я даже руку поставила чтобы было видно.

 Isn't she adorable? My friend took many pictures from different angles and the salamander endured all of this flashing and fussing around, but when we decided to put a leaf underneath her to make the picture more contrast, she lost patience and left in great indignation.

Даша ее фотографировала со всех углов и зверюшка все терпела , но когда мы решили под нее листик подсунуть, чтобы лучше видно было, не вынесла и сбежала. А мы ее на веточке еще сфотографировали.

Olympic continued

More pictures of Olympic National Park.

Forest around Sol Duc Hot Springs resort. Easy, well maintained trail, pleasant hike to the small waterfall.

Sergey with Michael in the forest. Hope there will be still such tall trees when Michael grows up and we won't have to tell him stories about the forest that someday was there.  

Here is another deer at Hurricane ridge.

And here is a small water bird that was swimming and eating something in the river. Looks like it was an American dipper - Cinclus mexicanus. It is the only swimming song bird in North America. Can dive and walk on the river floor.

Olympic Park

This Labor Day weekend we went to the Olympic National Park in our Washington state. On our way there we visited Olympic game farm - a place where people drive their cars through a fenced area with free roaming buffaloes, elks, zebras and many other animals. You can also buy a loaf of bread to feed the animals.

Buffaloes are my favorite animals there. It is very imressive when they start moving toward the car - the car seems so tiny then.

We preferred not to stop (as we were advised), but move slowly past them. However some people apparently enjoyed having a huge buffalo rubbing on their car.

This one was huge. And he didn't care about bread - just lay there in solemn solitude.

Next stop was at the Lake Crescent - a pristine glacier lake surrounded by beautifully forested mountains.

Olympic Wilderness is closed to logging so the trees are huge there. This one is medium sized, there are many that are far bigger.

The trees are covered with beards of lichens and mosses. This lichen has fallen to the ground.

The long stretches of ocean shores also belong to the Olympic wilderness. It is cold and windy and foggy there on the ocean shore and the shore is covered with enormous tree trunks bleached by sun and salt water.

Here I am standing on the bleached tree - you can see Michael's leg sticking from behind my back - he is riding in the Ergo.

Here is Sergey, mama and Spassky near a tree skeleton.

We lived at the Sol Duc Hot Springs resort in rustic wooden cabins. However inside they had comfortable modern beds and other conveniences of civilization. There was no TV or internet though.

Our last stop was the Hurricane Ridge - a place high up in the mountains, where there are deer roaming through the meadows. They come very close to humans and show no fear.

And finally I was very pleased to see a sculpture of cormorants in Port Angeles. These birds are grossly misunderstood and are often blamed for eating all the fish (which is usually overfished by humans) or other mischaps. But aren't they beautiful?