2013 - Weeks 28 and 29

Vacation was awesome. We saw and did so many new things, it was wonderful. We started out in Portland, like I said in my last blog post (sorry for the little overlap in my trip saga), with my family for my brother's wedding. While we were there, we went to the famous Powell's Books, visited the Vista House overlook, went to a small lavender farm, and did all the fun things associated with the wedding (eating lots of food, getting hair and makeup done, lovely ceremony, etc.)

Welcome to beautiful Portland

Then we headed to McMinnville to see the Spruce Goose airplane (which I thought would look like it was made out of wood . . . I was a bit disappointed that it was painted . . . silly me). Then out to the coast for whale watching and then down the beautiful Oregon coast to visit my husband's family. And all of this in four days :)

The ginormous Spruce Goose (that doesn't look like wood)

While we were there we relaxed a bit, tried to help around the house and garden (I even made a cake), did a lot of family visiting, and we took a drive out to Crater Lake for the day. I was very brave and even jumped in the really cold water. What a great place to visit.

At Crater Lake

Beautiful

After that, we drove up to Mt. St. Helen's and spent the day learning about that and going on a slightly scary hike. Thankfully, I didn't fall down the side of the very steep hill, and it didn't re-erupt while we were there, so we made it out alive :)

Me on the trail in front of Mt. St. Helens

We had a slight hiccup with trying to find a hotel that night because of a Seattle to Portland bicycle race, but eventually we found a room in Tacoma and visited the church there in the morning . . . lovely people. Then we headed northwest and drove up to the top of Washington. We stopped in the lavender capital of the U.S.A. and saw a lovely large lavender farm . . . it smelled so good.

Amongst the lovely purple lavender

We drove to Port Angeles and then up into the Olympic National Park to Hurricane Ridge. It reminded me so much of the Alps. We had just gorgeous photo opportunities the whole trip, so I hope you don't mind all the pictures I'm posting :)

If that doesn't say "Alpine" to you, I don't know what would :)

From there, we drove to Forks (and yes, we did visit some of the "Twilight" spots, but since none of the movie was actually filmed there, there wasn't much to see). First Beach was really beautiful though, so we stayed to watch the sunset.

Sunset at First Beach

The next morning we drove back into Olympic National Park, from the western side this time, into the Hoh Rain Forest. What a difference from Hurricane Ridge the day before. I expected it to be raining in the rain forest (especially because it was in Washington), but we got a dry day. It was a really cool place to visit.

Hoh Rain Forest

We made our way back to Portland and spent one night with another of my husband's cousins. We spent our final day with my brother, rock climbing out near Mt. Hood. It was my first time rock climbing outside, but both my brother and his new wife we impressed with the skills I'd gained from my month of indoor rock climbing.

Going up :)

So that was our trip. It could have been twice as long and there still would have been more things we'd have liked to see and do out there, but I think for the time we had, we crammed plenty of awesome stuff into it. I dare say that I got a full dose of exercise and new things for the week. I did read on the plane home, so I got my reading in too. What a full two weeks :) Have any of you visited or done any of these things? I'd love to hear about it :)