Washington

So after our Yellowstone trip, we were home for 2 days, then woke up at 5:00 a.m. on Thursday morning and flew to Seattle to see our friends Shawn & Traci.

We spent the first day in Seattle. First we went to Pike's Market, which was so fun. One of my favorite things about big cities are the markets full of fresh flowers, produce, and so many different random things. I got to sample some dark chocolate pasta...it was interesting. I'm still kicking myself for not buying any of the other exciting flavors of pasta: lime, mango, chili, black bean, cinnamon...the flavors sounded so incredible, but I didn't think I would be able to get them home without them completely getting smooshed, so I decided against getting them. Maybe I'll be able to find some online...note to self, start looking into this....

From there we headed to Red Mill Burger and had some incredible burgers, fries, and onion rings. Did I mention this place was featured on the travel channel? I can see why, it was definitely worth the trip just for this tasty food! On our way back to downtown we also drove by this random troll that is built under an underpass...it is ridiculously gigantic, and the city art council sponsored some artists to build it. Seattle is just random like that I guess.

We spent a few hours at the Pacific Science Center...it was not as exciting as I remembered, but we still had fun looking at some of the exhibits. They also had a butterfly exhibit where you could walk into a room and there were different kinds of butterflies flying all around. It was so fun to see so many different kinds, but Corey was terrified the whole time that one of them was going to land on him...what can I say, he really doesn't like bugs. Not even the pretty kind.


We then took a ferry across Puget Sound to Bremerton. This was my first time on a ferry and it was so fun! The view from the ferry was absolutely stunning (see picture below), and we loved the fresh sea air.


The next morning we drove to Olympic National Park and spent the day at Hurricane Ridge, Crescent Lake, and Ruby Beach. Have I ever mentioned how much I love the beach? Well, I do. And it was so nice to be able to go back, especially since it's been almost 2 years since I've been to the beach. We also ended up driving through Forks, Washington for all of you Twilight fans. It was definitely Twilight-mania there!

Hurricane Ridge

Crescent Lake, it was so blue, clear, and gorgeous. I wanted to jump in...oh yeah, except it was freezing...

They have really big trees in Washington: see exhibit A.

A fun picture of Shawn & Traci

Ruby Beach aka Heaven

Can I live here, please?

Saturday we went to Mt. Rainier National Park and spent the day hiking. We saw the.most.amazing.waterfall.ever. Really. It was so incredible, I could have stayed there for hours just looking at it. Washington is beautiful, because everything is so green. There were trees everywhere, and bushes that were full of gigantic flowers of all different colors. It was incredible. We also lucked out and had perfect weather all weekend, 70s and 80s and sunny. It was fun to have the nice warm weather, but still be able to see snow up in the mountains.

Thanks Shawn & Traci for driving us around, planning a great weekend, and letting us crash with you, we had a blast! And I'm sure that I missed some things...and totally got other things wrong about the places that we went, so hopefully you can forgive me!

(Also, be glad that I didn't post all of the pictures....I only had a couple hundred...I couldn't help myself, everything was so beautiful!)