Opal Creek National Forest

I went hiking last weekend in the Opal Creek National Forest, my first real hike in Oregon. (I hiked through the Ape Cave a few years ago, a lava tube on the side of Mt. St. Helens, but that was very different.) My calves are still so tight it's hard to walk without 800 mg of ibuprofen.

Opal Creek runs through 700 year-old old-growth forest. It rained most of last week so the forest was quite damp, but the greenery was amazing and I've never seen forest like that before. Trees that looked 300 feet tall, some mossy kind of plant that hangs from tree branches, and shallow green cover atop every square inch of the forest floor. A couple waterfalls and deep, crystal clear pools in the river. Then, just when you think you're in the middle of nowhere, a small community named Jawbone Flats appears with its own hydro generating station and old rusted out Ford trucks that look to be from the 1930s. The whole hike was novel to me, and definitely has me wanting to discover more of the Pacific Northwestern wilderness.