Our time on this journey is sadly coming to a quick close and times like these in the picture below I am savoring and getting super sentimental about. My prayer is that we don’t fall into the ways of this world, the “normalcy”, or the busy busy life ever again. The connectedness we have alongside the unbusy is what I’d like to maintain when we return “home”. The “norm” will never be our norm again, with the grace of God!
Off to Washington state we went after Oregon. Once again, I couldn’t have imagine the gloriousness of another state in our great country. At this point I don’t think I would ever have the desire to travel abroad…well except for a warm island with drinks in coconuts or pineapples of course.
I’m going to totally geek out here, but we stayed in La Push, Washington. Anyone catching on? The Quileute tribe from Twilight that Jacob Black was from is real tribe located in La Push just like the movie and next to Forks where Edward Cullen, the vampire, lived. We used hipcamp.com to make our reservations and stayed on someone’s land (with electric and water hookups) there for super cheap which was awesome! While staying there we visited the Olympic National Park. What a surreal place made up of four ecosystems: coast, forest, rainforest, and mountains.
Our first day in the park we hiked through the rainforest and up into the mountains, two of four ecosystems. The water was a light turquoise color. We learned that the color is caused from the snow melting on top of the mountains, flowing down toward the river and bringing sediment into the waters…wow mind blown! Our second day we went to the coast, three of the four ecosystems, at Rialto Beach to see Hole in the Wall, Haystack rock, and the driftwood made of whole trees. We collected rocks from the shore, putzed along the tidepools stemming with ocean life and balanced beamed along the driftwood. The third and final day we went to Second Beach and to get down to the beach we entered the fourth and final type of ecosystem, the forest. We hiked one mile through forest to get to the beach which was super cool and a little bizarre for this East Coast fam, especially when we saw a banana slug on the trail. This beach had bigger tidepools but less beachcombing to be done but was a fun finale.
Next, we headed to Whidbey Island to our campground so Shaun could paraglide along a most spectacular state park bordering a bay in Fort Ebey. Long story short, the wind was sadly not with him during our time there so no paragliding happened. We checked out a pier and tried crabbing, investigated Fort Ebey, an old fort used for coastal defense during WWII, and drove over Deception Pass (not for the bridge hater like me!).
Next a super duper shmooper exciting mention in this post…we headed to Glacier National Park to celebrate Brie’s EIGHTH birthday!!!!! How my baby turned 8 is so beyond me because in my mommy mind she was born two years ago and should still be in a stroller when we go places. We surprised her with our friends, the Youngs, showing up to join in the fun. On her actual birthday we rented kayaks and enjoyed the glacial waters on Lake McDonald. Brie and I even swam in the crystal clear and freezing glacial waters! Then we got ice cream (Huckelberry is the specialty flavor of everything in these parts and is even an ice cream flavor), bought some souvenirs and headed back to the campground. She opened presents and enjoyed her double chocolate cake with dark fudge icing and chocolate sprinkles.
The following day in Glacier NP we also hiked to three different waterfalls in one trip: Baring, St Mary and Virginia. They were all different from each other but St Mary Falls had the most turquoise water I’ve ever seen inside the US and Virginia Falls was tallest and went down along the rocks in a picturesque way. Our final day we took the kids into the park to get their Junior Ranger badges, shopped a bit around St Mary and got the kids ice cream. The whole park is astonishing and it was such a blessing to see the glaciers because they predict that in ten years they’ll all be gone unfortunately. If you get a chance…GOOOO!
This was the end of our time in Washington and Montana. Next we headed to Yellowstone, which is mostly in Wyoming but some parts are in Idaho and some in Montana as well. Deets on our time here in Yellowstone and Grand Tetons in the next post because we are still here and there’s so much to tell!
Day 3 we woke to watch the sunrise. Running a little bit late, we rushed leading to a speeding ticket in the Grand Canyon by a Park Ranger. Buuuuut we made it for the sunrise and it was spectacular! After attending a fossil trek, the girls earned their Jr Ranger badges. MOM TIP: If I haven’t mentioned it before, the girls love earning their Jr Ranger badges at the National Parks/Monuments/etc… Not only do they learn so much while we are in the parks, Shaun and I learn a lot too. It’s a great way for the whole family to learn about the place you’re in, be engaged, and collect something memorable.
After the Grand Canyon we ventured out of Arizona to Utah. What did we know of Utah…NADA! No expectations, real bucket list items or high hopes. With that said we headed toward the MOAB area to check out Canyonlands and Arches. I’d seen lots of pictures of Arches and knew that our pictures would be epic but other that than that’s that.
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