ONP

Due to some technical difficulties with our home computer, I am behind on posts... I'll try to get a few out this week to catch up. Last weekend (August 27th) we went on our very first mini family vacation just the 3 of us and visited Olympic National Park. It was a two day, one night trip ;) We left Saturday morning, and took Zane on his first ferry ride to head over to the Olympic Peninsula. He was very excited! He pointed out the water and all of the other boats we saw. We told him that he was on a boat too, and I think he understood... even though we drove onto it.






We really lucked out because the weather was absolutely gorgeous on Saturday. Our first stop was Hurricane Ridge, which is at about a 1 mile elevation. It was a little more adventurous than we'd expected... Zane got carsick (??) when we were pretty close to the top. We stopped at the first pull over spot we came to and started cleaning Zane and his car seat... eww. I'll save you the details, but we did leave at least one window cracked the rest of the weekend (thankfully we already had an appointment scheduled to have the car detailed)! He seemed to feel just fine afterward, so we still aren't really sure what happened since he's never gotten car sick before. There were some pretty wild flowers where we stopped:












The views from the top of Hurricane Ridge were amazing - we got a cool view of the Olympics that we don't usually get. We could see the Sound, Mount Rainier, Mount Baker, the San Juan Islands, Vancouver Island, and lots of wild flowers.












Then we drove by Lake Crescent and opted not to stop since someone was taking a great nap in the back:






After a couple of other stops, we eventually made it to the coast. We went to Rialto Beach and ventured up to Hole in the Wall - a mile and a half hike along a rocky/sandy beach is an adventure with an 18 month old! It was definitely worth the drive to see it in person. The weather was clear when we got there, and the fog started rolling in when we were leaving...












We spent the night in Forks, but there were no vampire sightings. :) Our hotel even had Twilight themed rooms, but since we haven't read any of the novels... we just stayed in a plain old, regular room. Sunday we visited a couple more beaches and passed through different forests on the long way home. The fog that rolled in on Saturday night was still along the coast by the early afternoon, and it was still really thick! We went to Ruby and then Kalaloch beaches on our long way back home around the peninsula.