Along this part of the route, old-growth rainforest meets the Pacific shore with little development between them. The abrupt transition from towering, moss-laden forest directly to wilderness beach is increasingly rare on the continent, preserved here by the park's protection of both the coastal forest and the adjacent undeveloped shoreline.
Roll the window down if you can, and you'll catch it, the smell of salt riding in on the air. The forest and the ocean meet right along here in a way they almost never do anymore, no town in between, no strip of development. You go straight from giant moss-hung trees to wild surf. That seam, where rainforest spills right down onto a roadless beach, is one of the rarest edges left on the whole continent.
Photo: Ron Clausen · CC BY-SA 4.0
