Jon and Nicole's Journey: 2009

Our favorite little sister, McKenna, traveled to Seattle all on her own to spend an entire week with us! It was exhausting, yet totally awesome! We did so much, including tons of shopping (McKenna is TOTALLY my thrift store buddy and she splurged on the COOLEST PURSE EVER at Nordstrom Rack. She said if she dies I can have it. :) and eating, with a tour of our favorite ethnic places including pizza, mexican, chinese, and indian food! The biggest adventure (and only thing we photographed) was an overnight camping trip to Mt. Rainier.

Camping was FREEZING! But the next day was PERFECTLY gorgeous and sunny. Here we are having breakfast.

Flat Annie came along too! We stopped to check out this waterfall...

How could you NOT want to live in the Pacific Northwest? It still takes my breath away...

Alley and Oscar ADORE McKenna and all the attention she gives them. She actually succeeded at tiring out Al, a miracle in itself. Al and Osc REALLY miss McKenna and hopes she comes back to see them really soon!

Thanks for visiting McKenna! We had a great time and hope you did too! You are welcome ANY time!

It was our fabulous four day *mostly* camping trip and our first real vacation alone since our honeymoon. The Olympic Peninsula made the perfect destination. The variety of landscape that occurs within the span of just a few hours drive, is truly amazing. We saw mountains, lakes, rivers, rainforests, waterfalls, oceans, beaches, and so much more! We hiked and biked and camped and as always, enjoyed good food and wine along the way.

The journey began with a ferry ride from Seattle to Bainbridge Island.

All good waits at the dock involve eating take out fish n' chips from Ivars, and so did ours!

Okay, so we left Wednesday evening and didn't arrive in Port Angeles until about 8pm, so our first night of camping was spent in this really nice hotel. Of course Flat Annie came on vacation with us too!

Our first adventure on our first full day of our trip was Hurricane Ridge. After a scrumptious breakfast at a little local place called Olympic Bagel, we drove from Port Angeles 18 miles up into the mountains. Here we are outside the visitor center. It was rainy and cloudy when we left, but we traveled above the clouds where there was bright sunshine!

Then, we assembled turkey sandwiches in the parking lot, put lunch in our backpack, and began a pretty difficult climb up the mountain even further along the Hurricane Hill trail. This shot shows some of the trail we traveled.

Even though the Olympic Peninsula had lots of 90 degree weather the previous few weeks, we still found one patch off snow left!

Hiker Jon was sweet enough to carry the pack for us! Check out the view. I wish the pictures would do it justice.

Another shot from the top! The clouds were pretty cool, but if it had been a clear day you could see the ocean, the Straights of Juan De Fuca and all the way to Canada.

Once we were off the mountain, we headed farther out onto the peninsula to Lake Crescent. This picture was taken at our campground, Fairholme, part of the Olympic National Park, where we befriended Ranger Jim and got lots of free firewood!

After setting up camp, we took our first bikeride along an almost deserted back rode with gravel, and lots of exciting hills, and a view of the lake through the trees.

Unfortunately, our bike portrait was the last picture we were able to take before my camera battery died. Not only were we camping without electricity, but I didn't bring the charger either. Lesson learned. We had to buy two Kodak instant cameras and pay quite a bit to have film developed, all which resulted in not such quality pictures. Sorry!

On Friday morning, we packed up camp and headed for a hike to a waterfall!

So many GINORMOUS trees everywhere we went!

One of the two log bridges on the way...

Prepare for a horrible picture of Nicole. Focus on the waterfall!

After the waterfalls, it was time for the beach, so we traveled on to the coast. We camped in rainforest territory very close to Rialto Beach. It was very rocky and smelly, with lots of big waves and driftwood logs.

Then we traveled to LaPush onto the Quinault Indian Reservation and hiked to Second Beach. GORGEOUS and sandy....

We also stopped at First Beach, which is easily accessible by car, and THERE IT WAS the Twilight Tours bus! The tiny towns of LaPush and Forks, WA have become major tourist attractions for teenage (mostly female!) fans of Stephanie Meyer's Twilight book series. I caved and have read two of the four books so far, and will admit that I actually like them.

I didn't pay to take the official tour though. Why would I do that when I could make Jon be my guide and drive me around to all the Twilight hot spots? I did have to put up with his teasing and eye rolling, but I know my fellow Twilight fans will enjoy these shots. Here's Flat Annie posing at First Beach where Bella first learned about "Cold Ones" aka vampires from her friend Jacob.

It was really great to see that most of the people and businesses of Forks have really embraced the Twilight phenomenon and are really welcoming and encouraging fans and making it fun!
The sign outside this hotel said, "Edward Cullen Didn't Sleep Here!"

Here's Forks High School where Bella met her vampire boyfriend, Edward in Biology class. Go Spartans!

We swung by the police station for a picture of Chief Charlie Swan's patrol car.

This family has agreed to let their home represent the Swan's house. There were definitely teenage girls knocking on the door when we drove by!

I posed with the replica of Bella's truck outside the Forks Chamber of Commerce.

At the hospital, we spotted Dr. Cullen's parking space.

...and that's where the Twilight tour ends. Back to the camping trip! We spent two nights at Mora National Park Campground. It was pretty moist most of the time, and definitely rained the last night. I suppose that's to be expected in the rainforest, huh? Jon didn't mind at all, and I only whined about it like 24 or 27 times or something like that. :)

Camping and rainy weather weren't excuses to forgo fine dining! Kabobs were on the menu our last night.

I had been DYING to buy a deck of UNO cards to play with on our trip, but even after going to several stores couldn't find them, so on our last rainy evening in Forks, I was determined, so Jon patiently traveled to four different Forks stores until we found the prize! If you could see the score sheet you would know that I was totally whomping him!

On Saturday, we drove the 18 mile long road to reach the Hoh Rainforest. Our first short hike was through "The Hall of Mosses". Incredible!

The size of the trees in the rainforest is truly incredible. You could really see just how huge they are when you walked beside the fallen ones. The information we read said many trees grow to 300 feet tall.

After our hike, we ate BLT's for lunch that we had made at the campground earlier that morning. We almost decided to leave, but then changed our minds and took one more hike on the Spruce Nature Trail. There were signs posted everywhere with warnings to stay at least 100ft away from Elk, because they had been charging people.

Can you find the elk in this picture!?!?!? We stumbled upon two elk feeding just off the trail, and we were definitely only 10 or 20 feet from them as we snuck by! I had been complaining about the lack of wildlife we had seen, so this was very exciting for me!

We headed for home on Sunday, stopping on the waterfront in Port Angeles for one more bike ride, and after driving to four different restaurants only to discover they were all closed, we found this awesome little fancy place at the Sequim marina. We looked pretty rugged after not having a shower for three days, but they gave us great service just the same, and we ate an awesome last meal of wine and seafood pasta.

Here's Jon back at home; showered but not shaved! He had a lot of work to do unpacking all our gear and spreading everything out to dry in the backyard.

I hope some of our family and friends want to come visit the Olympic Peninsula someday! It's a truly awesome adventure and we definitely plan to go back.