Washington 2010

Now that I've got the pictures up I'll write a description of our trip to Washington. This was our first time ever visiting the Pacific Northwest area. It really is beautiful. The very 1st thing I noticed as we flew in were all the extremely large pine trees...everywhere!

Thursday: This was our 1st day in town and we took my mom and Charles' boat down the Puget Sound to Blake Island. Here we hiked through the woods until we came to a very nice beach with soft sand and lots of seashells for the kids to collect. We spent a long time hanging out on the beach and we were practically the only ones there. We eventually hiked back to the lodge where they were cooking salmon by big fire pits for our dinner that evening. The salmon was delicious and even the kids loved it. After dinner we saw a short Indian show. Coming home on the boat back to Port Orchard it was dark out and we accidentally ran into a fisherman's net. Luckly, we quickly got it untangled from our motor with no harm done. We quicky learned to stay away from the other fishing boats that night.

Friday: This day we took about an hour long trip to Seattle on the ferry. While waiting for the ferry in Bremerton we played at a park next to the station. It had really cool water fountains and sculpted stones that the kids (and us) climbed and played on. While on the ferry we noticed lots of jelly fish in the water. The kids had fun counting all the jelly fish they spotted. While in Seattle we ate lunch along the waterway, walked through Pike's Market Place and took a monorail to the Space Needle. It was way too expensive and an extrememly long wait so we did not go up in it.

Saturday: It was a cloudy day today and we drove to Maple Valley about an hour away from my mom's house to see some friend's of ours, the Fuller's. Mackenzie and Mikell are really great friends and have continued their friendship even though they moved away from MN 2 years ago. We visited with them and went to see Snoqualmie Falls with them.

Sunday: Went to my mom's ward in the afternoon for sacrament mtg. then we went on a drive around the area. We drove to a cute town called Gig Harbor and walked along the dock there then to the nearby Kopacheck State Park. Here we hiked through more woods to get to a small rocky beach. It was high tide so it was even smaller. Again, we were the only ones there and we just relaxed on some drift wood while the kids played. That's another thing I noticed was that almost every beach we went to had lots of large driftwood on it.

Monday: We started our 2-day road trip today along the very western part of Washington. We first drove up to a small town called Sequim (but you pronounce it Squim) and quickly popped our heads in to a friend's dental practice. He and Bart went to school together and we visited with him for just a few minutes. After that we hiked again through some woods to get to the longest spit in the world called the Dungeness Spit. We walked along part of it. Aparently it goes out 5 miles and there is a lighthouse at the end of it.

We ate lunch in Port Angeles and drove on up the Olympic Mountain range to the Hurricane Ridge visitors center. We took about a mile long walk along a beautiful path through the mountains. It was gorgeous with all the wildflowers blooming and the coolest part was all the deer. They were every few feet more deer just wandering the path. And just right close to us a couple of times we saw fawns with their mothers. I loved this part of the trip the best. And the scenery was magnificent.

That evening we ate dinner and spent the night in Forks, WA. We stayed at the Dew Drop Inn where Stephanie Meyer had once stayed. I learned that none of the Twilight movies were filmed here but they sure are proud of their Twilight fame they have recieved. They have a tour you can take (we did not) that shows you a house that sounds like the description of Bella's house in the book, one that could've been the Cullen's house and other Twighlight places like that. All the hotels have at least one Twilight themed room and all the restaurants have at least one item on their menu that is Twilight themed. It really is a very tiny town.

Tuesday: Today started out with a hike through the Hoh Rainforest and a visit to a very large Spruce tree. We ate lunch at the Kalaloch lodge right along the ocean...vey good food. Then drove a short bit to Ruby Beach. This beach was gorgeous with lots of very picturesque rock outcroppings. We came while the tide was in and we spent a very long time walking/running and playing on this beach which had a rocky part to it and a sandy part to it. By the time we started walking back down the beach the tide had gone out and we discovered lots of really cool starfish and sea anemones.

Wednesday: For our last day in WA Bart wanted to go back on the boat on the Puget Sound. We boated around for a couple of hours and it was a clear sunny day that allowed us to get a great view of Mount Rainier. We had an overnight flight so we had a BBQ in my mom's backyard that night. Charles and my mom have made their yard beautiful with all kinds of beautiful flowers and a pond, with a bridge and even waterfalls. They kids had a blast playing back there.

Because of a few delays (traffic, wrong charge for our car, long airport lines, missed train to gate) we literally had to run as fast as we could to our gate. We made it to the gate at the time the flight was supposed to be taking off. Luckly, we weren't the only ones and there was still a line of people getting on the plane. That was a close one!

Overall, it was a great vacation. We did and saw stuff we'd never seen before and we all enjoyed our time with Grandma Sharon and Grandpa Charles!