Lake Quinault, what’s a “quinault”?

October, 2020

First off … how do you pronounce that word “quinault”? quin-o? It looks like a French word, oui? But that’s not how it’s pronounced. Ok, how about quin-olt? As in the word “bolt”. Nope. The correct pronunciation of the word, at least in the State of Washington, is quin-allt … as in the word “all” but with a “t” on the end of it, so just like the word “fault” but without the “f”. The accent is on the second syllable … ault.

So where did the word/name come from?

I think it’s not likely, but some reports say the name “Quinault” is an anglicized version of a native word kʷínayɬ. Those reports claim that the native word came first, before the word/name “Quinault”, and then the name “Quinault” came from the native word. “Quinault” was the name of a village at the mouth of the Quinault River in the 1800’s, although the tribe reports that “Quinault” was not their original name of that village. The village today is called Taholah. The name of the village was changed from Quinault to Taholah in 1905 by the native tribe in honor of Chief Taholah. In truth, the river, the village, and the people were given the name Quinault in 1787 by northern European settlers and trappers.  The name “Quinault” did not come from the native tribe’s language, but came from a French trapper whose last name was Quinault and who visited the area. There is documentation of the trapper Quinault visiting the area. The native tribe developed their word kʷínayɬ from the French name. This native tribe’s original name for the river, the lake, the village, and even their people, has been lost. That would be pretty irritating if that happened to you, yes?

Nonetheless, the local Quinault Nation here is well-known and well-liked from everything that I’ve learned on my trips to the Olympic Peninsula. If you wish more information about the Quinault people, check out this website.

With that very brief history lesson under our belts, let’s get up and get going this morning. It’s our first morning here in the Quinault area and there’s lots to see.

On the other hand, I hardly got out the door of my trailer this morning when I found such a peaceful scene … the lake … Lake Quinault in the morning mist.

 

 

The water was so still that the camera had trouble focusing. Me too. 🙂

I walked up towards the cabin where my friend, Jan, was staying. Before I got to her cabin, I was taken with this view (below) across the lake … the heavy morning mist, and a mountain peeking out the top of that mist.

I watched the mist for a couple of minutes, then walked on. I got past just ONE more cabin and something called me to turn and look again.

Just in those few minutes, the mist was lifting and the morning sun was already reaching through to the trees and the lake (photo below).

Oh boy, another glorious day! Let’s get going!

One of the places that both of us wanted to visit on this trip was the Hoh Rain Forest in the Olympic National Park. So that’s where we headed this morning. No telling when the weather might turn, so we chose this glorious day to head “up the Hoh”, as we call it hereabouts.

On the map above, the RED star is our cabin/campsite. The YELLOW wavy line is a portion of Highway 101 (it continues on both north and south obviously). The PINK wavy line is the circuitous two-lane paved road that follows along beside the Hoh River (up the Hoh) and takes us up into the Olympic Mountains to the PINK star. The PINK star is the public access point for the Hoh Rain Forest with a visitor’s center, a large parking lot for day visitors, a campground, and many hiking/walking trails.

But before we got to the Hoh, you’ll notice in the map above that Highway 101 wanders out to the Pacific Coast. What could we do? We stopped at an ocean beach for a view and a brief walk.

In the photo above, if your computer system allows you to enlarge the photo enough, you’ll see a dark island on the horizon right in the center of the photo, along with a tiny white dot on the left side of that island. The white dot is yet another lighthouse on this infamous and treacherous coast.

The very long somewhat dark-ish stuff on the horizon, behind the island, the dark area that runs the entire width of the photo, is a “weather system” out on the ocean … rain. It never materialized here on land where we were, but it was fascinating to see it out there and fascinating to watch the rain storm on the internet.

Here … let me zoom in on the island with the lighthouse so you can see it a bit better … and you can see the rain clouds behind it, miles offshore.

The island’s name is Destruction Island, for darned good reason!

After a few more miles, Highway 101 turned inland again, away from the coast. A few miles later, we came to the sign below.

Out of 62 national parks in the USA, the Olympic National Park is the 13th largest. It’s about the size of the State of Rhode Island. And that does not include the even larger Olympic National Forest that surrounds the Olympic National Park. Together, they comprise one of the largest protected areas in the USA, and rightly so.

We also found this sign above. I wasn’t sure who the “community of nations” is/was, nor what the “principles of the convention” are/were, but I liked the fact that this area of world is especially protected.

We turned to the right off of Highway 101 onto the winding PINK road that would take us up to the Hoh Visitor Center. When the sign below appeared beside the road, we still had a few miles to go before we reached the visitor center and the rain forest itself.

We spent the whole day up here. Rest assured, we left the area early enough to get back to our cabin and campsite, to get back in time to fix our suppers. 🙂

I’ll share photos of the day we spent in the Hoh Rain Forest with you in my next blog post.