As summer winds to a close (school started today!), I'm happy with how productive it has been and I have been. I seriously thought that not having to work this summer would give me some time off! Even with all the weddings, baking, sewing, bridal showers, and bachelorette parties, I managed to take a few days for myself and have a girls' trip to the Olympic Peninsula.
As I mentioned in my last post, my friend Jamie had her wedding at a beach house in Olympia and her reception a week later here in Eastern Washington. While on the west side, I stayed with my in-laws, and after the wedding, I stayed a few more days to hang out with the best mother-in-law a girl could ask for. Here's what we were up to...
Day 1:
I don't really have any pictures of day 1, but let me tell you, we got some serious shopping done. I visited a lovely little store called Charmin' Charlie's, a jewelry/accessory store which is a lot like a Claire's for adults. The mall had also just opened up a Torrid, so I did all my back-to-school shopping a little early to take advantage of their grand opening sale.
Day 2:
Day 2 was the beginning of the actual trip up the peninsula. We left the house with our mini-vacation largely unplanned, knowing only that we wanted to spend the night in Forks, perhaps see some vampires, and visit Second Beach. Other than that, it was just wherever the wind took us.
The drive from Margee's house to Forks is about 4 hours total. After about 2 hours, we had to pee and decided to stop in Sequim, WA, to use the facilities, check out the visitors' center for sight-seeing advice, and see Dungeness Spit. The man at the visitors' center was very helpful. He suggested we definitely see the spit and see Hurricane Ridge, a place I had never seen and Margee hadn't seen since she was a kid. Off to the spit we went.
On the way, we saw the first of many sightings of way too tame deer. These particular fellows were crossing the road without a care in the world.
Dungeness Spit is a long, thin strip of beach with a lighthouse at the end. It's really cool because on one side, you have a somewhat rocky beach with waves, and on the other side you have still water with more sand and clams and stuff. This picture below is taken higher up from the trail down to the water.
This picture may not look like much, but if you look closely, there's a mountain in the background (I don't remember which mountain the park ranger told us it was), and the tiny white speck is the lighthouse at the end of the spit. After hearing that it was supposed to be a 5-6 hour, 11-mile trek, we opted not to hike out the lighthouse and just built rock stacks on the driftwood instead.
We didn't spend too much time at the spit because we still wanted to see Hurricane Ridge and, on the suggestion of another park ranger, Sol Duc Falls. This park ranger was the same one who made Margee put back the rock she wanted to take from the beach, but we didn't hold it against him.
We stopped at the Hurricane Ridge visitors' center at the base of the mountain to pick up a pass to get into national parks. Luckily Margee was wearing her Coast Guard shirt, and the kind Polish lady at the counter asked if she was military. Did you know that anyone with a military ID can get a national park pass (including parking) for free? That's an $80 pass for everyone else!
The drive to Hurricane Ridge was a steep winding road up the Olympic Mountains that had Margee confessing her fear of accidentally driving off a cliff and pointing out exactly where more guard rails would be appreciated. I was doing my best to be comforting, but it didn't help that there were a bunch more deer in the road, right in the momentarily blinding sunny spots.
Hurricane Ridge itself was a gorgeous view of the Olympics in front and a peaceful meadow behind. I had to suppress the urge to yodel.
Here's another stupid deer. Literally 3 feet in front of me.
It was late afternoon by the time we were done with Hurricane Ridge, so we decided to squeeze in Sol Duc Falls before sundown, then spend the night in Forks where we'd nerd out on vampires in the morning.
Sol Duc Falls is in the middle of the Hoh Rainforest, one of the prettiest places on the planet. Everything is lush and mossy and smells good.
Not quite the falls yet, but still fun
After a .8 mile hike, we arrived.
From one of the overlooks, you can look back and see the original bridge you crossed over. This is my 'king of the world' picture.
After we had seen enough of the falls, we hiked back to the car, and just as we were driving out of the park, the sun set.
It was night by the time we made it to Forks. One of the park rangers at the spit had recommended one of the inns to us, but it was full, as was every other inn and motel we passed in town. Eventually we drove past a motel that had their vacancy sign lit, and we rented their last room from them. Apparently they had only had their sign lit for a little while because they had had a cancellation earlier. We dragged our bags up to the room, then dragged our tired behinds to the local watering hole for some much needed drinks, dinner, and friendly gossip about the Twilight craze.
Day 3:
We didn't see any vampires, but we did hit up all the gift shops and the visitors' center.
Tall, handsome lumber man.
Once we were done poking around Forks, we went through La Push to Second Beach. Cue werewolf nerdiness...
Second Beach was a hell of a hike, but it was so worth it.
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| I'm under a tree! |
This part of the forest was so cool! Trees were growing out of other trees, and they all had crazy root systems. We even saw several trees that had ferns growing out of crooks in the branches 30 feet up!
Once we broke through the trees, this is what we saw. We just had to navigate through all that driftwood, then we took off our shoes for a stroll through the sand.
A couple more beach pictures:
We decided after Second Beach to go see one more beach, then meander our way home. What we didn't realize was that there were 10 miles of construction on the way to that beach, but once we found that out, we turned around (much to the chagrin of the construction workers) and figured we'd find something else to see on the way back home. A couple funny pictures from the road:
Still at a loss for our last sight to see, we decided at the last minute to go see the Olympic Game Farm. I had never been and Margee hadn't been since she was a kid, but she explained to me that it started out as a home for all the retired animals from the old Disney movies with talking/performing animals. Now, it's just kind of a refuge for exotic animals that don't have a home.
Either way, it was probably the best thing we saw on the whole trip.
There were about a million peacocks roaming around strutting their stuff.
Zebra!
A Tibetan yak was giving me the stink eye.
Bears! During most of our hiking, Margee kept talking about how she wanted to see a bear. I'm glad the ones we finally did see were in enclosures.
This guy was the chubbiest, and therefore the cutest. He looks so snuggly!
Next up, jungle cats!
Go Tigers!
I'm kind of sad my camera focused on the chain link and not the lion. He had just been fed and was chewing on this gnarly looking bone. We could hear him snuffling and the bone cracking.
Another kind of disappointing picture...These two timber wolves were chasing each other back and forth, but they were too fast for me to get a good shot, so here's a picture of the back half of a wolf.
Elk
White deer. This guy has a more specific name as to what kind of deer he is, but I don't remember what it is. At about this time we were almost out of the park, and my camera battery was dying fast.
I managed to get one last picture of the sign on the way out before my camera died completely. Luckily, we had seen everything we wanted to see and made our way back home dog-tired but really happy.
