Seattle / Olympia National Forest / Mount St. Helens

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Seattle

Day 15 – July 24

Lazy morning at our friends the Hall’s in Lacey, WA. Eventually Kevin, his daughter Alana, and we made our way to a local farmer’s market for a late breakfast. Great, busy market with music and lots to choose from. Tooled around here for about an hour. As one of the biggest disappointments of the trip, I bought some local craft sauerkraut at the marker, but I lost it and never found, but didn’t realize it until back at home…doh!). At around 1:00 pm we got into Kevin’s car and headed to Seattle, since earlier we had purchased 5:30 pm tickets online for the Space Needle observatory.  Though only about 60 miles it took about 2 hours to drive there with traffic and some detours. We didn’t realize how much traffic there is in Seattle until now….unbelievable!

Along the way, Kevin detoured and showed us around the Freemont area of Seattle. We stopped at the State Capitol in Olympia, and then the “Troll Under the Bridge” stone sculpture, and a “blood” stained Lenin statue in Seattle. The troll under the bridge is well worth any detour.  It is an art student sculpture of a massive stone troll holding a real VW Beetle in his grip.  It is located under a bridge on the corner of N. 36th street and Troll Ave. North.

Then, on to the Space Needle.  We can’t go to Seattle for the first time and NOT go to the Space Needle, right?   The area around the Needle was very lively and fun. There was a large fountain which kids were playing in that spouted water quite grandly to the music of Beethoven’s 9th. 

There were dozens of vendors and lots of people, but not too bad.  We got right in to the Needle as we had a set time with our tickets. Once up top, we took in the amazing views of Seattle, the mountains, including Mt. Rainer, and Puget Sound.  We had a quick dinner at the food court at the Armory by the Needle (where Emilie lost her Space Needle souvenirs).

On the way home we stopped for really awesome shakes at Norma’s Burgers, a local favorite (and Kevin’s favorite).

Once at Kevin’s house we spent a couple of hours just chatting until bed time.

Olympia National Forest and Park

Day 16 – July 25

In Kevin’s car we drove north on to Olympia National Forest and Park to hike some short trails through the Hoh Rainforest. The drive took about an hour longer than expected each way, about 3 1/4 hrs. It was well worth the trip. We forgot to take our National Park pass from our car but we lucked out, and due to a power failure at the ranger stations we didn’t have to pay the $25 entrance fee.  We saw some amazing trees and rainforest landscape along Spruce Nature Trail and Hall of Moss Trail near the Hoh Rainforest visitor center.  These were short hikes but perfectly representative of everything to see in a lush rainforest…these did not disappoint.

 

We also took a picture with the world’s largest spruce tree. 

On the way back, we stopped at Ruby Beach along the coast just outside the rainforest, about 25 miles south of Forks (just out of vampire reach).  The beach was a stone beach with hundreds of very large gray drift wood logs scattered along it. There were two large rock formations in the water that kids were climbing.  It was too cold to swim, but it was a beautiful pit stop at the Pacific Ocean, where we both dipped our hands and took some great pictures.

It was a long ride back and got a bit late but found a Denny’s in Aberdeen for a late dinner around 10:00 pm. It was here at Denny’s that Emilie ate her most favorite food of the whole trip…cheesy tater tots…they really were pretty good. Along the desolate two lane highway on the way back that night after Denny’s, we passed two hitchhikers who were about a mile apart in the middle of nowhere on the dark, isolated road, and the second one was carrying a chainsaw.  I wanted so bad to pick him up because the guy must have had a great story to tell, but Kevin and Emilie weren’t interested. Got to Kevin’s house around 11:30 pm.

Mount St. Helens

Day 17 – July 26

Woke up to a casual morning at the Hall’s and did laundry.

Went to a great lunch at the Fish Tale Ale Brewery in Olympia with the Halls. Afterward we completely unloaded and reorganized the car at the Hall’s and took off around 3:30 pm toward Mount St. Helens. We drove to the Johnson Observatory, which is part of the Mt. St. Helens National Monument. The observatory is the closest place to view the mountain without hiking in. There were awesome views of the mountain, from the side which blew out in 1980. The Visitor’s Center / museum was closing in 20 minutes at 6:00 pm so we did as much of that as we could before venturing out onto the viewing trails. We got in for free because it was closing soon, but it was enough time to see what we wanted. It was a warm and sunny afternoon, so we got great viewing at 4,000 ft. elevation as we tooled around the Observatory and its short walking paths. We could still see the path of destruction via the leveled treescape. This was a fantastic side trip! We did have a small concern of running out of gas here but we luckily made it to a gas station on the way out from the road to the mountain.

Then we headed out around 7:00 pm towards Portland, Oregon to spend the night at Jeff’s, the best man at our wedding. Arrived at Jeff’s around 8:30 pm. We walked from his house to a nearby pizza place for beer and pizza with Jeff. Then off to bed in Jeff’s finished basement on a very large and high air mattress.

 

Next: Portland, Oregon Coast, Crater Lake NP