Olympic National Peninsula

Dan and I were fortunate to have great babysitters (thank you Grandpa and Grandma!) in Colorado so we went on a trip without kids! It was awesome! Dan served his mission in Tacoma, Washington and fell in love with Washington state. He has always wanted to drive the Olympic Peninsula. I must admit, I was a little skeptical...we are just going to drive around all day?!?  But I loved it! I had forgotten that traveling without kids means you can stop anywhere you want to and actually enjoy things. :)  We got to Seattle late on Sunday evening. We got our rental car and then drove to the home of a man that Dan met on his first day in the mission. He has been battling cancer so he is living in a nursing facility for now. His brother and wife were at the house to let us in.They were very nice to let us stay with them. First thing in the morning we went George's nursing facility to visit. It was really nice to meet him. He is great at keeping in contact with Dan.

Dan in front of George's house.

Then we started our drive. We stopped in Olympia for some breakfast. We found a place on Yelp called The New Moon Cafe. It was delicious! I almost wanted to drive back the next day and eat there again...it was that good! Then we had to hurry up to our campsite. It is a very popular campsite and is first come, first serve so we had to hurry to get a good spot overlooking the ocean.We made a quick stop to see one of the biggest spruce tree's in the world and still got a great campsite!

Kari hugging one of the biggest spruce tree's.

Dan looks so small.

Our campsite looking out over the Pacific!.

We spent the rest of the day walking on the beach. We took a long walk on the beach by our campsite and also drove North to another beach called Ruby Beach. It was so beautiful!

The next day we drove to the Hoh Rainforest. We hiked 2 trails through the rain forest. While on the first one we were just walking and talking and I looked up to see a large set of antlers just up the path. I panicked. Dan took pictures. It ended up being a whole herd of Elk. The leader gave the ok and they slowly walked to the other side of the trail eating as they went. It was pretty cool to see, but I was freaking out the whole time.

Then we headed toward Lake Crescent Lodge. We stopped in Forks to eat some pizza and chatted with a set of Elders. We got a little room right on the lake for the next night. It was expensive, but it was worth it. The lake was beautiful! I have never seen water so clean and clear in a lake. We rented a canoe and you could see to the bottom even out in the middle. It was hard to really capture the colors, but the colors of the lake were amazing! Dan of course had to take a dip even though we did not bring anything to swim (he just jumped in with what he was already wearing).

It felt like it never got dark in Washington.  We had a lot of time each day which was really nice. We had originally planned on driving up to Hurricane Ridge on Wednesday morning but had time so we went up in the evening on Tuesday. We were worried out little Chevy Spark rental car wouldn't make it, but Sparky did great! We were really fortunate to have made the drive on Tuesday because Wednesday was very cloudy. We probably would have missed the amazing view!!  And we definitely would have missed meeting a little mountain goat family.

The last day we drove through a little Scandanavian town called Poulsbo. We loved it! It was so cute. And they had the best bakery I have ever been to! We took the pretty ferry ride across the bay to Seattle before heading to the airport.