A trip to the Pacific northwest wouldn't be a complete without checking out some of the amazing geography. In the last post I shared pictures from Seattle and whale watching in the San Juan Islands.
On Thursday we woke up in Anacortes where we crossed Deception Pass Bridge. We ended up parking at the lot and while Kristy wouldn't walk on the bridge because of her fear of heights we did walk down to the beach.
After spending a half hour down at the beach we got back in the car, drove down Whidbey Island which was cool because the NAVY Jets were doing training as we drove. We then took a 45 minute ferry ride across the Puget Sound and then drove another hour to Olympic National Park.
We drove up from the visitor center to Hurricane Ridge which has amazing views, pictures don't do it justice. We did some hiking in that area and I wish we would have planned to do more things in Olympic because the park has difference ecosystem: sub-alpine forest and wildflower meadow, temperate forest, and the rugged Pacific Shore.
After visiting Olympic we drove almost two hours to visit family in Silverdale and on our final day, Friday, drove to Crystal Mountain which is a ski resort that's just a few minutes from Mt. Rainier and OF COURSE cloudy and overcast so you couldn't see Rainier.
While the weather made it impossible to actually see the mountain on Friday during our hike I still recommend doing the Naches Peak Loop, because it's an easy and amazing 3.5 mile hike.
We did the hike in 2 hours because we took a side excursion but no matter your experience level this walk is easy for both kids and adults and the views are incredible. MY ONE WARNING. If you're afraid of heights and cliffs without guard rails then plan on stopping at a dispensary or blindfolding yourself because the drive can be a bit funky. Here's Kristy after the 30 minute drive up the mountain.
....and good news on Saturday it was beautiful and blue skies so we ended up getting a picture of Mt. Rainier.
I'm amazed that we did as much as we did in the short amount of time that we had and hopefully we'll get to visit again soon.