While the rest of the country sweats and swelters, in the Pacific Northwest we experienced one of our latest, coldest, wettest springs ever and it’s just kept on going through what I am told is now summer.

Frankly I’m not opposed to cool weather, I like cool weather. But really, Mother Nature?

What all this has meant is that everything that depends on nature is running really, really late. Everywhere I’ve gone in the northwest this year is late. The growing season in the Palouse was running late. Fish are running late. And wildflower fields as well as commercial flower fields are running late. If I had a real job I’m sure I’d be late for that.

Anyway, I just finished up this year’s Olympic National Park photo tour (July 12-17). And everything is late. Sometimes this played into our photographic hands, sometimes not. There is still snow hanging around near the Hurricane Ridge Visitors Center and the spring wildflowers in the meadows are just now beginning to pop up. These are flowers one would normally see in mid to late June.

And the Hurricane Ridge Road, which is often lined with color by this time of the year was dull except for the occasional grouping of red Indian paintbrush, which were inevitably growing right by the side of the road where there was no parking or room to stand. Sigh.

But we did get to see a black bear sow with her yearling cub.

And we had rain and clouds. Rain. And. Clouds. No sunrise or sunsets to speak of, though we did manage to get up at insane o’clock for the obligatory treks to sunrise locations and stay up until stupid o’clock hoping for a break in the clouds.

There is an upside, however. The forests and waterfalls looked amazing. No rainbow at Sol  Duc Falls this year but the forest was lush and green and the little spring wildflowers were out to play. The Hoh Rainforest looked the best I’d ever seen it for July and we also got to see a number of giant Banana Slugs as well. Banana Slugs on the ground, perched on the end of a fern, climbing trees, and traversing branches and sticks. And the Jardin du Soleil Lavender farm in Sequim, despite being a couple of weeks behind, looked great. Usually we only get a couple of hours
of photography in before the light gets too harsh. This year we could have stayed all day due to the clouds. And the rain.

We also got some very moody early morning images at Lake Crescent. And actually, I was pretty pleased with what I saw. Sometimes monochrome scenes can be very calming and relaxing.

The coast was….well… there were a lot of pretty rocks on the beach.