Science or Fairytale?

Friday, Debbie and I were discussing the virtues of science vs. fairytale. We sometimes get into talks like this and we're never really sure how they all begin but today's debate could be accurately pinpointed to a tale we heard earlier in the day.

You see, we were talking to a very friendly and competent (yet know-it-all) kind of a park ranger - you know the type I'm talking about, we've all encountered them at some point. All I can say is that these park rangers must have to deal with some absolute imbeciles each and every moment of a working day, God bless them. But jeezus, they talk to you like you're a kindergartner - oh, that's a lake, no way, I thought it was an ocean??

Which brings us to Lake Crescent, a beautiful, azure glacier fed lake in Olympic NP. My pictures of it are crap so you'll need to google it to catch the essence - very beautiful.

The park ranger lays a fact sheet on us listing the Lake's stats and on the flip side has this story that I am paraphrasing from the NPS produced fact sheet:

Mount Storm King - An Indian legend tells of the creation of Lake Crescent...seems long ago there was much fighting amongst two tribes along a small river that flowed thru what is now Lake Crescent. These disagreements escalated into a full on battle that lasted 3 days. The mountain spirit, one mean and angry dragon with an attitude, became very upset and hurled a huge boulder into the river killing the warriors and damming up the river to create present day Lake Crescent. It is said that tribal members still refuse to visit the area where their forefathers were killed.
Now, here's the clincher....Geological studies and records support the idea that a large scale disturbance affected and may have created Lake Crescent.
End of NPS paraphrasing.

You see this could have been caused by a major landslide (Science) or from a spirit dragon hucking a huge boulder (Fairytale).
We're not going to go too deep on this one folks, I think just the shallow end of the pool will do for now. In fact, when it comes to this spiritual/fairytale stuff I'm still wearing floaties on my arms. However, when it comes to science I'd say I can venture into the deep end, but only with lifeguard supervision.

So here's my point....I think science does an excellent job of explaining the details of past events and with a large degree of accuracy - although we're never really convinced WHY certain things happen. Here's where fairytales step in and fill the void.

So what do you think in this instance - geology or mythology? I'm going with geology all day, others may have differing opinions.

Marymerre Falls hike at Lake Crescent...very beautiful



Let's catch up on our whereabouts the past couple of days.....

Are you guys fans of the book(s)/movie(s) Twilight? I'm not and could not really care one way or the other but we were apparently in the area where the story is based - Forks and La Push, WA. For those not familiar it's a vampire fantasy type dealio and seems to be very popular (refer to earlier discussion on science vs. fairytale).



We saunter into the local all-in-one restaurant, grocery store, fishing guide, motel, gas station in La Push and they are definitely wringing all of this Twilight commercial hype to the hilt. So I ask the owner, a lovely woman, a bunch of questions about vampires, like - are they real and are any of them currently on the premises. I think she was getting a bit annoyed at me because her answers all had a hint of sarcasm. We shortly thereafter vacated the Forks - La Push metro area on Wednesday morning.
We took a 20 mile ride along a beater Forest Service gravel road deep into the woods along Rugged Ridge and snapped a few nice photos. It was almost like hiking deep into the forest as we did not see anyone and saw some beautiful country - and we avoided the 20 mile hike, not too bad.

Wednesday afternoon found us at the Sol Duc campground where we stayed for 2 nites.
The highlight of the stay was the Sol Duc (sole duck) waterfall that Debbie and I hiked. It was a hilly 2 miles out and back with some rough trail along the way and Debbie rolled right on thru - I was so happy she made it. That's one tough gal making the final step...



We also spent an evening at the local hot springs pool and restaurant with a nice relaxing soak and outstanding meal.

Before we left Sol Duc Friday morning I pulled a hike up, and I do mean up, to Mink Lake. The info sign at the trailhead said it was a 2.5 mile long one way trip but did not mention that 2.495 miles of it was steep, uphill along a very rocky and tree root strewn trail. I almost gave up but soldiered on because I knew you guys wanted to see a nice photo of Mink Lake on a crisp and peaceful lake. Hey, I do it all for you guys! At least the return was 2.495 miles downhill......



Ahhhhh..........made it!

We then moved on about another 40 miles and posted up at the Heart O' the Hills section of Olympic NP - I can't believe we're still in this Park, it never ends! - just south of Port Angeles, WA, a fine little town by the way, where we enjoyed a nice lunch and walk along the waterfront.


Yours truly, at one with the cormorants in Port Angeles, WA.

Saturday we headed off to Seattle where we caught a Sounders soccer game Sat nite and will sightsee Sunday and Monday.


Yes, they were as up tight as they look.

Currently residing at the Trailer Inns of Bellevue - let's just say the use of the word 'Inns' in their title is way misleading. It should be Trailer Dumps of Bellevue, but it is 10 minutes from downtown Seattle and is generally pretty quiet. We're only here for sleeping and high speed internet
so it's working out just fine. Haven't seen any crack heads yet, but my head is always on a swivel.

Which leads me to this conclusion...within 4 hours of driving we went from an environment where we were worried about wild bears in the middle of nowhere to worrying about crack heads in an urban setting - what a strange, strange world we inhabit - wouldn't you agree?

I'm tired and going to bed, sleep well all.

We'll post again in a day or two with our happenings in Seattle, thanks for reading.