Some Catching Up To Do

Now I know why I don't blog anymore. It takes way too long. It has taken me four months to finally write about our trip to Olympic National Park on Memorial Day Weekend because I knew it would take forever. I'm going to have to get out the map to remember the places we went too.

The first night we camped at Deception Pass State Park on Whidbey Island. It was beautiful and loud. I say loud because it is right by a Navy Base. It was fun to see and hear the jets and other planes flying over us, but by 10:00 P.M. I had had enough. I am so glad they stopped as we were going to bed.

It is a good thing the jets stopped because then we were able to hear the visitors in our camp and scare them away; otherwise, they would have eaten through all of Lauren's Capri Sun's and that would have been devastating. Darn raccoons! Here is our campsite.

The second day we drove down Whidbey Island to Keystone to catch a ferry to Port Townsend, which is on the Olympic Peninsula.

By the way, the whole reason we went on this trip was to see Glines Canyon Dam and Elwha Dam, which are on the Elwha River, before they are both torn down. Jason had learned about them in one of his classes. This will be the largest dam removal ever in the U.S. Jason had a great idea to climb down into the "Do Not Enter" area to get a closer look at the water spilling out. Dumbly (if that's even a word), I followed. Lauren had no choice.

Anyway, they are tearing down the dams to restore fish habitat and fish population. Before the dams were built, there were 400,000 returning adult salmon over 70 miles of river. Today there are 4,000 adult salmon that are able to return five miles up river.

Glines Canyon Dam:

We drove up to Hurricane Ridge. It was a cloudy day and snowing on top, so we didn't get to see how beautiful it is.

Elwha Dam:

On the third day we continued on to Neah Bay, which is the most western part of Washington. We walked to the point on a nice wooden path. We ended up staying near Ozette. I didn't get any pictures of that.

The fourth day we went to HOH Rain Forest. The pictures don't show how cool it was.

Finally, we stopped at Ruby Beach.

This picture shows the reaction of me when I had just told Lauren not to step in the water. It shows Lauren's reaction too....

Then....she does it again. Go figure. What a great ending to a great trip I suppose!