olympic national park

So, today is the first slightly cloudy day we've seen in over two weeks of touring the Pacific Northwest. A perfect day for some dorking out on the computer.

In case you haven't already figured it out from previous posts, our good friends were in town last week. One of the highlights of their visit (besides seeing them, of course) was checking out Olympic National Park. Olympic is a HUGE park and we only had a couple days, so we toured it the good old American way: lots of driving, lots of beer, lots of interpretive signs. And oh yeah, a couple short hikes as well. Driving, which is not my favorite thing to do, has its benefits...we got to see Rialto Beach, the Hoh Rainforest and Hurricane Ridge in less than 3 days. The diversity of landscape in Olympic is absolutely amazing. I'm not sure where else you can tool around with tide pools on the beach, nuzzle nurse logs in a rainforest and watch mule deer in a high alpine environment in under 3 hours. Incredible.

Unfortunately I only have pictures of Rialto Beach...at least they're pretty cool.

Walking toward the cool spiky beach things

Sean checking out anemones next to the creatively named "Hole in the Wall"

For scale, Kel and Dave on the other side of "Hole in the Wall"

These babies were everywhere...

Group shot!
Kelly and Dave have the rest of the pics from this trip, including those from the Hoh Rainforest (just picture a forest with a thick bed of green ferns, huge cedar trees and creepy yellowish moss covering everything) and Hurricane Ridge (just picture beautiful snowy mountains), so here's the last important one I have from our two days in Olympic...

Sean eating S'mores at camp! Mmmmmmmm...
We had a great time, Sean mostly because he got to go 3 days without showering or shaving, a luxury for him. After dropping Kelly off at the airport on Friday we drove directly south to Mt. Shasta. That report is coming next, stay tuned!