Frommer's National Parks of the American West - Don Laine [319]
Located on the west side of Port Angeles, this restaurant is an unexpected treat and serves some very unusual dishes. Chef Toga Hertzog apprenticed in the Black Forest and has brought to his restaurant the traditional Jagerstein style of cooking: Diners cook their own meat or prawns on a hot rock. With 24 hours' notice, you can also have traditional Swiss cheese fondue or a lighter seafood fondue. To start your meal, try crabmeat Rockefeller or the sampler of house-smoked salmon, scallops, oysters, and prawns. For dessert, nothing hits the spot like the chocolate macadamia nut mousse torte.
IN FORKS
Forks Coffee Shop
241 S. Forks Ave. (U.S. 101). ☎ 360/374-6769. www.forkscoffeeshop.com. Main courses $3.95–$13 breakfast and lunch, $11–$22 dinner. DISC, MC, V. Daily 5am–9pm. AMERICAN.
An extensive menu of well-prepared American food and a casual atmosphere make the Forks Coffee Shop a good bet. It features all the usual breakfast items, including gigantic hotcakes and create-your-own omelettes. A limited number of breakfast basics are available all day. Lunch consists of a variety of sandwiches, burgers, and baskets such as fish and chips and fried chicken. Dinners are primarily steak and seafood, with local fresh fish whenever possible, and include the soup and salad bar. There is a good selection of homemade pies for dessert.
The Smoke House Restaurant
193161 U.S. 101 (at La Push Rd.). ☎ 360/ 374-6258. Main courses $5.95–$12 lunch, $9–$17 dinner. DISC, MC, V. Summer daily 11am–10pm; winter daily 11am–9pm. Closed Thanksgiving, Dec 24–25. AMERICAN.
The name says it all. This place smokes fish, and the salmon is just about the best we've ever had. It has a good smoky flavor yet is tender and moist. If you don't feel like sitting down for the smoked salmon dinner, smoked salmon salad, or smoked salmon and cheddar cheese tray appetizer, then consider getting some to go. A few other items are served, including beef and chicken, but the smoked salmon is so good that's what you should get.
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PETRIFIED FOREST NATIONAL PARK
by Don & Barbara Laine
THE FIRST THING YOU'LL NOTICE AT PETRIFIED FOREST NATIONAL Park is the dozens of logs lying atop hills as if on display, many of them pointing in the same direction. Closer up, you can see the colors in the wood—reds, greens, yellows, blues, and purples, all of them rich and moist-looking, like wet paint. The colors might tempt you to touch the wood, and if you do, you'll find that it isn't wood at all, but cold, hard stone.
About 225 million years ago, these petrified trees were enormous conifers growing in a tropical forest. Floods swept them into large rivers, tearing off their branches in the process. Eventually the trees bottomed out in the shallow waters of the floodplain, where silt, mud, and volcanic ash buried them. Because almost no oxygen could reach the entombed trunks, they were slow to decay. Silica from the ash gradually permeated the trunks, replacing or filling the wood's cells before eventually leaving quartz in its place. Minerals such as iron and manganese streaked the quartz with colors. The end result: The wood became beautiful rock.
Recognizing the financial value of this rock, early settlers began shipping it out on East Coast–bound trains. When the residents of the Territory of Arizona realized that the "wood" might soon be gone, they petitioned Congress to protect the "forests." Using the Antiquities Act, Pres. Theodore Roosevelt created Petrified Forest National Monument in 1906. Congress designated it a national park in 1962.
The same sediments that entombed the trees buried other plants and animals, preserving them as fossils as well. Erosion has exposed these clays and sandstones, collectively known as the Chinle Formation. With little or no vegetation to hold them in place, the sediments erode quickly and unevenly, forming mesas, buttes, and furrowed, conical badlands, unearthing thousands of fossils, including bones from some of the most remarkable creatures ever to inhabit the earth. In