Have you ever had the experience of eating so many appetizers, that you don’t enjoy your main dish as much as you thought you would? The dish is great, but it should have come out earlier in the evening. That was our experience at Olympic National Park. When you have been surrounded by beauty in every national park, after a while it isn’t as impressive anymore. Our first campsite was in the Hoh River Rainforest. We hiked the Hall of Mosses and Hoh River Trail. We were blessed with crystal blue skies, so we didn’t need our rain jackets. The forest was gorgeous, but after just visiting the Redwoods and Crater Lake, it was tough to get the kids motivated. There was plenty of wildlife; deer, elk, bald eagles, however, the children preferred to relax at the campground, and playing along the banks of the Hoh River. We needed a change of scenery. Luckily, and Olympic NP had just the thing; Rialto Beach. Our sunny skies gave way to a thick marine layer, which made its prominent rock promontories all the more imposing. A 1.5-mile hike north from Rialto Beach brought us to some very impressive tide pools. We timed our visit with low tide and were not disappointed. Our attention turned away from the utopian Hoh River rainforest toward the cranky and cramped sub-tidal fauna of the Pacific. Life in tide pools can be tough, predators abound, and food is scarce. One tide pool held our attention for more than an hour. There were hermit crabs on one side, finger sized cabezon fish on the other, separated by a row of hungry sea anemones. The stage was set for a tide pool tantrum. I cracked open one of the abundant California mussels and dropped it into the pool. The tide pool sprang to life in a miniature game of “steal the bacon”. It was a hurricane of activity as each creature viciously fought the others for food. It was fish vs fish, then crab vs fish as all the creatures shredded the mussel to bits. At one point, two hermit crabs were fighting over a piece of mussel, when one of them accidentally backed into the tentacles of a waiting sea anemone. The kids shrieked with satisfaction as the crab was rapidly engulfed by its turquoise tentacles. More! More!, the children cried, enthralled by their newfound mini version of the Hunger Games. It was only when we cracked enough mussels that the crabs and fish were not hungry anymore, that the kids decided that it was time to go. We looked out over the acres of other pools, each one now seeming to us as its own Coliseum, each struggling to survive the rhythm of the Pacific tides.
