Knocking in Jefferson County, Washington

I and my husband have been visiting the Lake Quinault, WA area for the past 5 summers, for up to 10 days at a time. This past June,2003, around the 17th, about 5 PM, we were hiking the Quinault Rainforest Nature Trail,on the south shore of the lake, down at the Cedar Bog area. While at the bog, something dark and large moved behind the reeds/ tall plants there, about 10 yards from where we stood. It could have been a bear, or something that had been crouched down looking for something.Whatever it was, it moved away, and we never got a [good] glimpse of it. On June 19th, we took the hike up to Wolf Bar around 5 o'clock P.M. Twice,on our way up, we heard what sounded like rapping/ tapping on a hollow log, back towards the places on the trail where we had already hiked. Since there was a herd of Roosevelt elk in the area, we didn't think too much about it. When we got to the end of the main trail, we stayed about 15 minutes just enjoying the quiet. There were no other hikers that we passed. We decided to turn back when we began to smell a strange, not very pleasant smell, and heard 3 knocks on what seemed to be hollow wood (this time the sound came from just past the end of the main trail, where we hadn't been.) I kind of joked about the smell, thinking that it was only the shallow water in the stream there. But we had remained at the same place near the trail end, and had not smelled that smell during the prior 15 minutes. The next day, about 7:00 P.M. we took the short hike to Irely Lake. On our way back, the sunlight was getting fairly dim, so we had to watch where we were walking. About 3/4 of the way back, we heard this tremendous sustained roar-growl sound - almost like it was out of a science fiction movie. Not like any bear that we've heard, and certainly not at all like a mountain lion. It was loud, but seemed to be somewhat distant - perhaps 100 or so yards off in the forest. And it never repeated itself. We scurried back to our car and drove home. We hesitated about reporting this, simply because we love that area and were worried about what publicity would do to the area if indeed a bigfoot/ family of bigfeet were found there. However, I know that if one is ever to be found and photographed, sightings and noted sounds need to be reported.