As anyone following the blog will know, Jason and I just got back from a great vacation out in Washington State. The main attraction was to see Olympic National Park, but we also got to see Seattle & Mt. Rainier as well. Jason's been posting some random pics from his phone, but after sorting through the trip camera pics we pulled out some of our favorites below. It'll seem like a lot, but these are down-selected from over 700 (darned digital cameras). Enjoy!We stayed 3 nights in Seattle, Washington at the Vintage Park Hotel, which was a newly renovated building. Overall the location was good, & the hotel was very nice. It had a wine-theme with free wine tastings every evening, which you know is Katy's style.
We walked everywhere in Seattle, a very hilly city (even more so than San Francisco it seemed), and took many pictures on our rambles.
Enjoying some fresh scallop & shrimp ceviche and oyster shooters at Pike's Market:
Walked from the hotel to the Seattle Space Needle and toured the surrounding area. The Space Needle was constructed for the 1962 World's Fair, so it's surrounded by a park area with sculptures and other exhibits. I was surprised when Jason braved the trip to the ope of the Needle and went onto the open air observation deck. It was a very clear day (especially for Seattle!) and you could see all the way to Mt Rainier. Though unfortunately the picture doesn't show the mountain too well, it really did look otherworldly as a backdrop for the city.
Part of the Space Needle complex was the Experience Music Project (EMP) and Science Fiction Museum. EMP had an exhibit to the Seattle grunge scene (Nirvana fans would love it) & Jimi Hendrix. SciFi featured Battlestar Galactica & Avatar... weird. The best part of the museum were private jam sessions where you could enter a closed room for 10 min & play as a group on real drum sets, guitars, & keyboards. Jason was much better at drums than me, despite my RockBand practice.
Next we took an ultra-cheesy but somewhat endearing Duck Tour of the city, which features a restored WWII amphibious vehicle. Unfortunately the normal tour route was cancelled because of a Gay Pride parade which gridlocked the downtown area, so after waiting 25 min in stopped traffic they took us on an alternate route to the water and a side borough of the city called Fremont. We saw the water house from Sleepless in Seattle, and old coal-to-steam power plant, and a giant troll sculpture under a freeway. Disappointing we didn't get the real tour route, but it was still a nice day to be out in the open air.
The last day in Seattle we saw the historic Pioneer Square part of town. We took an entertaining tour of the Seattle Underground, where you get to stroll through the musty condemned original street level of that part of the city (today's "street level" is actually the 2nd story of the original buildings) and learned some interesting history of Seattle. Also, we saw trees with stockings, I assume a holdover from the Gay Pride parade but am not 100% sure. Finally, we met up with Mom and Dad for a very nice dinner of oysters and seafood at a waterfront restaurant.
The next morning it was off to Olympic National Park, which was about a 3 hour drive (including ferry ride) away. The park was beautiful. We stayed just outside the park at the Oceanside Resort in the town of LaPush, on a Quiluete Indian Reservation. We stayed in a 2 bedroom cabin which had a balcony with a view, as can be seen in the pics below. I'm not sure which Jason enjoyed more, the view or the Alaskan beer he can't buy back east!
A short walk from our cabin was First Beach, which we visited several times. Rock formations jut out very dramatically from the water. Although the sun didn't shine too often on the shore, I thought they looked very mysterious in the clouds. Several large trees had drifted up onto the beach, one of which was HUGE! It was fun to climb on so long as you didn't mind the height (note how high Jason is standing off the ground). Unfortunately the water was frickin' freezing Mr. Bigglesworth, though we did see several surfers (wearing wet-suits).
We purchased a permit to light a fire on the beach, and enjoyed s'mores while enjoying the sunset.
There are tidal pools on the shore when the tide is low... during our visit, the lowest tide occurred around 6:30am. So, Jason and I woke up early one morning to hike a mile to Second Beach which was supposed to have the best tidal pools. The beach was beautiful (more dramatic rocks), and tide went out amazingly far to show the nice sand beach underneath- you could hoof it to the rocks so long as you made it back before the tide returned. We saw lots of mussels, clams, star-fish, sea anemone, and kelp. Luckily it was worth getting out of bed to see.
In case it sounds familiar to anyone, La Push and the Quileutes are featured in the vampire books and movies "Twilight". La Push is home to the werewolf pack. The reservation and neighboring town of Forks definitely embraced the entrepreneurial spirit of Twilight - despite the fact the movies were actually filmed in Oregon 0 there were were reminders of the movie everywhere! I didn't mind since I'm a fan of the series (it's a guilty pleasure) and you can definitely consider me "Team Jacob".
Olympic National Park is characterized by three topographies: coasts, rainforest, and mountains. Here are pictures of Rialto Beach, which was similar to where we were staying on La Push but backed right up to the forest.
We went on several hikes in the Hoh Rainforest. It was rainy that day, which we didn't mind considering it seemed only fitting. The trees in the rainforest were gigantic - evening seeing the washed-up trunk on First Beach didn't give an appreciation for their living size. The trees ranged from 250-450 ft in height and could be up to 500 yrs old (Jason adds that it really made you want to cut them down). Also, everything was so green (name the Mel Brooks movie).
We also saw some other forested areas: Crescent Lake and Sol Duc river and falls.
The mountainous region of Olympic National Park was also very impressive. We couldn't do any hiking because there was still 7 ft of snow on the ridges. However, the view was beautiful. While visiting the Hurricane Ridge area of the park, we saw a huge black bear on the side of the road - I'd never seen one in the wild before (only those Grizzlies in Yellowstone).
After Olympic National Park, we took a long drive to check out Mount St.Helens and Mount Rainier. Due to a navigation error and road closures from snow, we never did make it to the St.Helens Visitor Center, but that was okay I saw it in the distance. Mt. Rainier was beautiful, and still had a lot of snow on the top! A major avalanche occurred on the mountain the day before we arrived, which was a major event and made the evening news.
The last day we toured the Boeing museum to see large planes being manufactured, which was interesting but maybe not worth the $20 entrance fee (basically just a big company advertisement). After Boeing, we had a nice dinner and caught the red-eye home.
Okay, that about wraps it up for this VACATION MEGAPOST! If you made it to the end, congrats and thanks for following along :)
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