Last year we took a big family trip to the Redwood Forest in Northern California. We enjoyed the trip so much we gave it another go, this time in Olympic National Park. Redwoods and Olympic were both fabulous. I think I liked this trip better because we were more confident in our ability to plan it and now that the boys are older I am off duty for bathroom breaks (if you've ever had four year old twins you'll know what a relief handing the reigns over to the dad is). We flew into Seattle and then started a big loop by driving North to Whidbey Island. The plan was to camp at Desolation State Park, but since it was raining we decided to get a hotel. We drove further to Anacortes and stayed in an awesome converted Victorian house. We ate at a restaurant where Dan ate ribs, which rivaled as his favorite part of the whole trip.
Before we could get on the road we had to stop at REI for some fuel. This happens to be the national headquarters for REI and their flagship store. If you look closely, you'll see that Dan has a huge grin on his face, but the boys weren't quite as excited.
The boys are really into word searches right now and spent time in the car and tent looking for words.
Desolation State Park.
This picture is for Scott, inspired from your cool texture pictures.
Our first campsite in Olympic National Park was Sol Du Loc. There are natural hot springs and I thought we'd sit in those, but I should've known better that Dan wouldn't want to sit around with a bunch of strangers and smell like sulfur. Fortunately the hikes in the area were really beautiful.
Dan took close to 300 pictures on the trip, partly because he's trying to refine his skills on the camera and also because the boys have entered the awkward smile stage and he has to take 15 pictures before he gets one that is acceptable and it still involves a tongue.
I wasn't fast enough with my camera to catch this moment, but the boys were really excited to help Dan do the dishes, it was cute.
On the way to Marymere Falls.
Marymere Falls
We had to find a way to pass the time while Dan took pictures.
Rialto Beach
This was my favorite part of the trip. The tide pools were really cool. We probably saw twenty starfish and lots of sea anemones.
Hole in the Rock
I brought Roald Dahl's "James and the Giant Peach" to read, we read the whole thing on the trip.
For all the Twilight fans out there we went through La Push (werewolf territory) and Forks (home of the vampires). We wanted to buy cheesy souvenirs for everyone, but they were too pricey.
Kalaloch Beach, this was an amazing campsite, on a bluff right on the ocean. I think this was the boys favorite part.
We watched the sunset from our campsite.
The trees were really sculptural from all the wind.
Quinault Rain Forest, we also went to Hoh. We got lucky and it only rained the first two days of our trip and then we had beautiful sunshine. I kind of wish it would've been raining when we visited the rain forest so that the moss would've been dripping.
There were some beautiful waterfalls just off the road and we drove around Lake Quinault.
We finished our camping, which was fun but we also smelled after three days of not bathing. We checked out the sites in Seattle. We spent most of the day at the Pacific Science Museum. Our friends Russ and April Johnson live there and I wish we'd taken a picture with them, but we did spend an evening with their family.
If you've hung around the boys during the last six months you'll know why I took this picture. For whatever reason they think the word "eyeballs" is hilarious and are constantly making random jokes about eyeballs. This is an optometrist office that we walked past and I couldn't resist a picture.
This is near Pikes Market which I found very disappointing. It'd probably be cool to go on a tour and learn the history, but it felt like a big tourist trap. Best line from the trip: we were sitting next to a German family in the hotel and Brad leaned over and asked "Mom, are they speaking French, Spanish, or Canadian?"
