Trail of Two Forests

Bill and I went on a little journey today.  We went north to Woodland and turned to go up to Cougar, Washington.  We'd never been there before and I just wanted to see that area.  We passed Cougar and ended up at the Trail of Two Forests, which is a place I wanted to see, but our ending up there was totally an accident.  This was a perfect place for us to visit and it was so interesting and beautiful.  What you are seeing is a hole in the ground, with a ladder and anyone who has a flashlight, can fit inside, and isn't claustrophobic, can get into this hole and then crawl underground through this tube and exit at another spot about 50 feet away.  You can see the Extra photo and read about this amazing hole in the ground.  We had lunch in the small town of Cougar, made famous when Dan Cooper (DB Cooper) parachuted out of an airplane after getting money, never to be seen again.  He was thought to have been killed by his fall, which was over this part of Washington state. Or survived, walked out and lived a quiet life.  Depends on who you talk to, I guess.  The press descended on Cougar, since there isn't anywhere else to go to get a cup of coffee or talk to the locals in this area.

The two forests in question are separated in age by 2000 years, but they stand side by side. One forest is a lush, old-growth Douglas-fir and western red-cedar ecosystem that surrounds this boardwalk trail. The other is a young forest that was originally engulfed and consumed by the lava flows from an eruption of Mount St. Helens more than two millennia ago. The trees from that ancient forest are gone, and all that remains are the imprints left by their burning hulks in the cooling lava. The lava solidified faster than the trees burned, and as a result there are hollow impressions of trees engulfed by the river of rock. These three-dimensional imprints of trees are called lava casts-three-dimensional impressions in the rock-and this scenic loop trip offers plenty of opportunity to study them.

The trail loops through the two forests, passing some remarkably beautiful lava beds along the way. The old-tree molds in this lava show that the forest that was gobbled up by the liquid rock was truly impressive-some of the hollowed-out tree casts are more than 5 feet wide. Kids will love the trail, especially two connecting tree hollows about halfway around the loop. Kids can crawl about 50 feet through the heart of these "trees."


Of course, if you go to my Flickr page , today's adventure begins with the 5th photo and continues to the barns, which we saw on the way home. There are prettier photos than this hole in the ground, but this was so amazing, I had to feature it. 


Hope you are all doing well.