Week 4: Olympic Peninsula Trip!!!

Place: Lake Crescent and Salt Creek
Time: 4/23-4/24
Weather: Rain! Sun, cloud, and more rain...
Temperature: 50-60 F

Initial thoughts: This trip was absolutely incredible. We were able to go to three different looking places! A forested area, an oceanic beachy area, and a field-grove open area. So many places that were completely different, but all close together. That was amazing. Coming back to Seattle was such a weird site. Two days out in nature, then coming back to see buildings and gray air was odd.

Lake Crescent:
Species list: Pseudotsuga menziesii (Douglas fir), Alnus rubra (Red alder), Calypso bulbosa (Fairy slipper lily), Sedum spathulifolium (stone crop), Castilleja miniata (Common red paintbrush), Trillium ovatum (Pacific trillium), Taxus brevifolia (Pacific Yew), Zonotrichia leucophrys (White crowned sparrow), Alectoria sarmentosa (Common witch's hair), Oplopanax horridus (Devil's Club), Lobaria oregana (Dragon skin lichen)

Landscape picture of Lake Crescent: (descriptions below)

Landscape of Lake Crescent. Top: Top view on mountain. Bottom: Dock view of Lake Crescent

I decided to take some drawings of Lake Crescent at two different views: one at the top of Storm King Mountain and another at the bottom of the lake. Honestly, the lake view picture (bottom) was beautiful. The picture was taken early in the morning when the clouds were setting in. I tried my best to recreate what I saw. The clouds wisped around the mountains, setting a beautiful view. There was nothing but the clear blue water, the green mountains with silhouetted Firs in the background, and wisps of clouds. Occasionally there was the Mallard swimming by, and I saw a Bald eagle soaring across the lake, landing on one of the island mountains. 

At the top of Storm King was also beautiful. There's more mountains to see and more definition. I could see the brown dirt spots on the mountains alongside the green trees which I think were mainly Firs. At the top of the mountain were many shrubs, including Manzanita and the Pacific Yew (tree). These shrubs and trees were more adapted to rocky poorer soils. They thrive on top of rocky mountains because there is less competition, and they may not need as much water.

On the one hand there's a view filled with life, and on the other hand is a view of peace and loneliness (the good kind).

The water was so blue and clear. I could see right through into the water, even while looking at the deep end. Maybe the lack of sea plants is what's making this lake so clear and blue looking. Plants are natural filterers, so maybe the trees and plants nearby are filtering the water and putting it back into the lake?

On the bottom zone of Lake Crescent/mountain. 

The bottom zone is much more moist than upper zones, and it probably happened because of the lake's past. The lake was probably high to cover parts of the walking trail, and there's evidence of this along the path where large rocks/cliffs looked shaped by something like the water, where the land looked eroded and the "cliff" looked chipped. (I forgot to take pictures of it!!!!!!)
Here are some species of the bottom zone: (Conifers and water loving places).

• Vanilla Leaf--there was a lot of these all along the trail and near the waterfall area. I found these plants mostly in areas that was near water or got wet. Contrary to its common name, it doesn't smell like vanilla at all. Its other name is "Deer foot" so perhaps deer like to eat these and it tastes like vanilla to them? (**It looks like a deer foot)

Vanilla Leaf. Short plant that grows on hills or the ground in moist areas. It has 3 leaflets that are 3-6 lobed and rounded. It's a paper thin and soft plant. Very flimsy. There is 1-2 main veins with smaller veins branching out of it.

• While near the lake, I got a good picture of the White-crowned Sparrow. It perched on top of a rock. I don't remember the chirp but it wasn't chirping much anyway. I couldn't get a closer look to see what it looked like.
• 

White Crowned Sparrow. As its name implies, it has a black head with white line in the middle. The tail is much longer than the regular sparrow and is kind of cut.

• Calypso bulbosa, also known as the Western Fairy Slipper has a pleasant vanilla like aroma. The flower has no nectar, but the sweet aroma tricks pollinators into pollinating it. The smell lures in bumble bees, who rub against the pollen and takes it to another flower to pollinate. The flower successfully adapted to its lack of nectar. This flower has only one dark green leaf growing out of it. This flower is common in Western areas ranging from Canada to California. I found the flower underneath the largest tree in the Olympic National Park. The tree was shading the flower from direct sun and rain. I'm not sure of any history about it, but the morphology is pretty interesting. (Source: http://www.arkive.org/fairy-slipper-orchid/calypso-bulbosa/)

Fairy slipper. It grew with others, but individually. It has one single leaf at the bottom. It is a purple color with streaks of pink and white. It has a lip. This flower was pretty soft and dainty. The stalk is a purple brown color that droops the flower bulb. The single leaf at the bottom is dark green and tough. It felt and looked waxy.

• Another plant we stumbled upon was the Western Trillium. Tim explained how this flower has a hard time reproducing, so we shouldn't be picking them. The only way the flower gets pollinated/reproduced is by ants. Ants take the seeds of the flower and disperses it wherever. The ants are attracted to the oil the flower produces and carries it with them, making it a reasonable way to disperse its seeds. The flower has a hard time surviving, especially since people keep on picking the flower, and deer keep eating it. Once it's picked, it dies and doesn't grow back. So the way to harvest this flower is to pinch 1-2 leaves and leave it be. There's a Native folk lore that the bulbs of this flower would be used as a love potion, often with women feeding it to men to make them fall in love with the woman. (Note: I didn't color the large leaves because I wanted the veins to show up clearly).

Trillium ovatum. The flower grew on a single stalk. It's hairless and short with 3 green sepals underneath the petals. It's found in the understory underneath trees, giving it shade. There's yellow pollen in the middle of the flower, and it spread onto the petals. I drew it and tried to color the yellow on the petals.
The flower petal has 3 large veins running through, with smaller vein dents coming off it. The sepal has light veins, but not much. The leaves have veins that are curved, with a bunch of sub-veins branching off.
The end of the flower petals have a notch in it (forgot the technical term). I tried to make it clear in the drawing. But I'm not sure if this is typical. It may have just been nicked by something, or the petals were fragile and cut.

Both the Western trillium and Fairy slipper depend on biotic forces for reproduction and seed dispersion. The ant and trillium both benefit and is a symbiotic relationship, with the ant getting food and the flower being brought elsewhere to grow. The case for the Fairyslipper and the bumblebee, the bumblebee gets no benefit but the orchid does. The orchid benefits while the bee has no effect.

• Walking along the flat trail, there were a lot of Devil's Club along the trail. Leaves are maple shaped. The stems are thick. There are 7-9 pointed toothed lobes. It grows in a cluster. The wood is grows on is thick. It was very abundant along the streams.

Devil's Club. There were bundles of them growing along the Lake Crescent trail, which was surprising. They were taller than 5 ft. and not within my reach. Thorny on its stems and underside leaves.

My conclusion to how these plants thrive here: the water from the lake used to go up to the cliffs where Storm King starts. That would explain why so many smaller leafy plants thrive in the bottom layer. The area receives shade from the large Firs so the temperature is much cooler than in the open area on top of the mountain. In this area, insects probably help seed these plants since insects like cooler climates.


Mountainous zone: Walking up the mountain, the plants started to change, marking the start of a different zone. I began seeing more rocky and dry plants. There were Stone crops and figworts growing on the rocky hillside. There were also Yews and Manzanita. There were less thin flowers such as roses and lilies, and more fat plants like succulents who retain moisture well. Going up the mountain the zone changed from a wet and well drained area to a rocky, dry area. I could really tell from how the plants look.

• Common Red paintbrush: This was growing on the rocky hillside while climbing up Storm King. The figwort has a lot of fine hairs on the leaves and stem. Leaves are narrow and pointed, with the ends tinted a red/orange color. It has shallow lobes. It was growing in a clearing and open wood.

•  Broad leaved Stone Crop--Leaves are succulent, and when broken it's fluffy inside with water spots in it. The leaves are circular and alternate and grouped together. No flowers were out. It was growing on a rocky cliff in an opening where there was very little to no soil. There is a bulbous green round shape stemming from it.

 These plants thrive from the sun. It probably likes open areas because it gets more sun, and doesn't have to compete with other plants for water. These plants are well adapted and retain water pretty well.

This trip was for focused exploration and trying to ID plants on our own. It was cool be in the forest that I'm used to, then climb up the mountain too see a completely different species list! I found a bunch of mushrooms while on the bottom of lake crescent easily, but on top of the mountain I found none.
What the best part was seeing the Black tailed Deer! While we were on the "Moments in Time" trail, a small deer (maybe a baby?) came up to the open prairie area and started eating the plants. I saw a baby Western Hemlock the deer nibbled on. The top leaves were gone, leaving the bark. It was amazing being in an area that deer comes up to casually. It must be a "wild" area that the deer don't feel threatened.
Bird watching was fun. There were so many bird calls that I couldn't recognize! I was amply gratified (lol) when I saw a Bald Eagle and Raven! That was awesome. Throughout this trip, I saw so many majestic birds and creatures in such a short amount of time. I also found a Robin's egg on the ground. I didn't know that Robin's eggs were actually bright blue colored. I just thought the Robin Egg candies stores put out for Easter were fun colored for kids. I didn't think they were actually bright blue colored. Jorge taught me how it's a valuable source of calcium for birds. Since this egg is dead, it's valuable for birds to eat it. Birds need calcium to create new shells and babies, so they often eat shells for that scarce resource. Therefore it's important to not take anything out of nature, otherwise you might be indirectly causing harm to creatures.

Robin's egg. It was cold and dead :( 

Salt Creek:
Species list: Haematopus (Oystercatcher), Arbutus menzeisii (Madrone), Orange sea cucumber, Blood Star, Chitons glaucus, Sea urchin, Bull Kelp, Giant kelp, California mussel, Northern Bay Mussel, Purple shore crab

*Note: Most of these species I'm guessing the names of. I'm not at all familiar with sea species and am waiting for the ID on iNaturalist to help me out. Unfortunately I forgot to write down the names of these sea critters :/ So I put what I think are the names of species, and will update names later.

Walking along Salt Creek was difficult. The rocks were slippery and there were many of them! I've fallen and tripped a couple of times...
The ocean created an awesome river ripple. It was completely shaped by the water. At first I thought it was always like that, but now that I think about it I'm pretty sure this was just a landscape change of that day and is not permanent.

The sand is shaped by the water.

You can see how the water is taking the sand clumps. The edges are craggled and taken away.

Closer look, you can see how the water is eating up the sand, creating a cool looking stream path.

I was taking the above pictures and this is what happened. I began sinking and the sand sunk into the water. I wasn't aware that this was a naturally occurring stream that I had to be wary of. I thought it was a permanent structure, if you get what I'm trying to say. It's difficult for me to explain.

This is what happened when I was taking a picture of the small makeshift river the ocean created. 

By the end of the day, the makeshift ocean river engulfed even more sand and made the river bigger. I forgot to take a picture of it! But it definitely got bigger. This was the first time I've ever seen the ocean create something like that, and it was amazing. I wonder if this river brought in more sea creatures for the Gulls, or if it displaced some sea creatures.

I felt bad stepping on the anemones populating the rocks. While looking at the landscape during low tide, I could see so many sea creatures at the intertidal zone.

• There was an Orange cucumber chilling in the small tidepools of rocks alongside anemones. The cucumber was slimy, and had bumps going across. It was hard, but also squishy.  It has a bright orange/red color and was very small. Most of the cucumbers looked attached to the rocks.

• I also stumbled across a Red Blood Star (Henricia sanguinolenta). One was hiding underneath a rock near water and looked alive, while another one was on top of a rock that was unfortunately dead :( 

Live Blood star holding on to life by sitting in a small pool of water left from the tide.

Dried up, dead Star. The star's color changed into a gray color.

You can see the difference between the stars above. It's the same star, but one's alive while the other is dead. Completely different colors. The live one is more slimy, and holds its' bright orange/red and yellow color. You can't see the bumps clearly on the live one. But the dead one's color completely dulled and dried up, allowing the small scaly dots to appear.

The tides probably pushed the benthic stars up to the shore, and stayed in a low tide for a while. The water probably didn't reach all the way up to where the star was so the star dried up.

• Strawberry anemone. There were so many on the tide pools! They were everywhere so it wasn't hard drawing them. I drew one open and one closed with as much detail as I could, but there really wasn't much. It's such a simple creature. It was super mushy and squishy! Me and Yushan had so much fun poking them heheheheh. I made sure not to harm them though. Some of them make a weird high pitched water squirting sound when pushed. They react almost immediately to pokes, so maybe that's a safety feature they have because with each poke they close up, then open up a minute or two later. The underwater anemones are almost always opened up whereas the ones all on the rocks are closed. The tides were low when we were there, but there were so many anemones! Later on in the day the tide came in and the onshore anemones were submerged and opened up.
• The sea anemone is mainly shaped by abiotic forces. When the salt water comes up, the anemone is able to open up and feed (or do whatever they do when they open). When the saltwater retreats, the anemone looks as if it protects itself and tries to retain its moisture. It shrinks in size and is more squishy without water, and grows larger and more tough in water. This species looks to be dispersed by the water.

Strawberry anemone. They were everywhere! They were small on land, big underwater. Dispersed through the water!

The lower portion of this picture is a drawing of where the anemone resides. It's hard to distinguish due to my lack of artistic ability, but at the edges of the land (the tide pool area) are where the anemones were. They were everywhere! On top of rocks alongside barnacles that looked dead. Kelp and seaweed were all over the rocks, and it was super slippery.

The top is a landscape picture of the cliff. I tried to capture the erosion from the ocean. The top part exposed the roots of trees dangling, so I'm guessing the water washed away that part a while ago. Then shrubs started growing on the rock and near the roots who are well adapted to rocky soil. You can see where the water eroded the land by keeping the rocks smoothed and indenting the cliff. It's still brown soil, but with a lot of large rocks in the cliff.

Top: Cliff near ocean. Bottom: Ocean view (beach and rocks)

At the end of this trip, I couldn't get the smell of sea air out of my nose. The crashing waves was a soothing sound, making my sketching a relaxing experience. I found an awesome blue shelled chiton and anemone shell (which I didn't take because it'd probably end up gathering dust or in the trash). I think it's amazing how we spent a whole day in a forest habitat, then drive a couple of minutes to an tidepool area with a completely different ecosystem. We went from Lake Crescent to Salt Creek, to another beach area (where we found sooooo many Gulls and more Eagles!!! but nothing else really), to a plane field that's prairie like, like a farm.

I forgot the name of our last spot, but it was so different from the other three stops. Imagine it like a farm: it was open fields of brown grass and long fields of nothingness. Again, I saw Black tailed deer in this area eating. They were so close to us. I believe the place isn't visited much so the deer come out and can feel calm.

When we were going back to Seattle, I was so used to the natural habitats we visited. Three different ecosystem/fields all within a certain area. It blows my mind how we can go visit all these different areas within a few minutes. This field trip had me appreciate what I find out in nature. I never really explored the beach or forest thoroughly. I usually just strolled through enjoying the scenery, not the creatures living in the ecosystem. This field trip really brought a new light to how I think about nature now. That's why I thought it was so weird going back to Seattle and seeing all the gray buildings and construction. My mood definitely went from happy to gloomy. The trip felt like a getaway, and I really treasure it. More people need to go out and get away from gloomy industrial life to appreciate life in different ecosystems. My mood instantly changed going to and from the peninsula, so maybe others' would too feel that

Although, I think I may have enjoyed the trip even more if I didn't have a midterm on the Monday... That's what was on my mind for a majority of the trip.