Seattle and Olympic NP

Seattle is gorgeous. We're moving there, at least until we see something else that is also beautiful. Let's wait a few days and see what happens.

Went to a wedding in West Seattle. It rained in the morning but cleared up a few hours before the ceremony. We watched with baited breathe as the rain crossed the sound, but it held off until we started walking to the reception across the street. Hooray! The wedding was super cute and the setting was beautiful. There was even an osprey carrying off a fish as vows were exchanged. We'll presume that bodes well.

Seattle was great. We parked near the wedding in the early afternoon and took a bus to downtown. We visited Pike Place market (of course) and were rather sad that fish doesn't keep well on the road. Such great looking fish! We visited a little shop and got some temporary road trip wedding bands since the lack of rings was driving us slowly insane. Had the sampler at the Pike; the beer ranged from ok to fairly good. The city itself was great, we loved the hills, the green, and the water.

Stayed the night in Tumwater again, then set off for Olympic National Park. We drove up the east side and got a camp site at Sequim Bay state park. [the state parks tend to have showers, the national parks most often do not.] The forecast called for a couple days of dry weather, so we chanced booking two nights at our site. That afternoon we drove down a random forest road (not the one we intended to, but the signage was not particularly great) and found ourselves at a trailhead for Mt Zion. We hiked to the summit along a great 1.8 mile trail, only 1300 feet vertical. Great views of the Olympic mountains through the misty fog and it only rained on us a little.

After a night of solid rain (forecast for dry...) we left camp and traveled to the west coast where there is a strip of park along the beach. We walked along Rialto Beach until the tide hemmed us in, and had a picnic lunch. After that we drove down to the Hoh Rain Forest and walked through the mossy trees. Maple trees were common, that was surprising. The moss was pretty intense and we are planning on coming back here to do the rainforest-to-glacier trail: a 37 mile round trip hike. Someday when we have a warm house to return to later.

It was actually sunny-ish and fairly warm, so when we returned to camp our stuff was mostly dry. We decided to head out the next morning before more rain moved in.