Just Dune It!

This whole experience was totally spontaneous and a total blast!  For $60 each we got ATVs and an hour to explore the dunes.  I accidentally went airborne on the first dune and nearly gave Terry a heart attack.  

This was an awesome memory for the last day of our trip!  

Camp 18

This neat place we visited on the Oregon Coast deserves its own post.  I had read about this place on another blog.  It boasted "cinnamon rolls as big as your head" - which was pretty much all it took to get it on our list.  

We arrived on a Sunday morning and shared an enormous cinnamon roll with a side of BACON!  It was delicious!  This was the only time we dined indoors on our entire three-week trip. 

Camp 18 is not just a restaurant, but an outdoor logging museum with all sorts of VERY LARGE equipment to look at.  It was an interesting way to work off some of our calories from breakfast.  

Blue Skies in Seattle

We had a fun afternoon exploring Seattle!  We arrived in town just as the rain ended and enjoyed an uncrowded walk and late lunch at the Pier.  

Great fish and chips! We had fun feeding the gulls here!

In spite of Covid, it was possible to go to the top of the Space Needle.  It was really expensive, though, with an extra long line due to social distancing, so we opted to view from a distance and walk around the park.

Notice the "Mask Up" flag

We also spent some time driving around the part of town that had been part of the CHOP protest.  There were a lot of businesses boarded up and closed.  

Olympic Peninsula

After weeks of blue skies, we finally found some gray skies and cooler temperatures (except in Forks, WA - the rainiest town in the USA - where the skies were blue and we had a pizza with cashews on it!). The beach we most wanted to go to (Shi Shi Beach) was closed due to Covid, so that was a bummer.  I don't think Terry and I had ever seen beaches with so many logs on them.  I did love looking in tide pools on Ruby Beach. I wish we had checked the tide schedule when we arrived.  The morning we were there was the lowest tide of the month, and we could have seen a lot more if we had gotten up a few hours earlier.  

Ruby Beach

Lots of logs made some interesting driftwood

Sea anemones

Rain forest

Pizza with cashews! Really good!

Rainiest town in the USA

Lake Crescent Lodge

Lake Crescent

View of Canada from Hurricane Ridge

A rainbow!

Lighthouse on Whidbey Island

Deception Pass

Skyline Hike - Mt. Ranier National Park

We almost didn't make a stop at Mt. Ranier. Our hostess in Yelm (see previous post) convinced us that we could hike at Mt. Ranier in the morning and still drive to Olympic National Park to camp for the evening.  We were a little concerned that the summit would be cloudy, but the sun came out, the wildflowers were beautiful, and we had a great time!

This "halo cloud" was gone after about an hour or so

the highest we got on the hike