Dearest Readers,
You'll remember that this year's theme was A Pacific Northwest Summer. We were going to explore our lovely home environs on a weekend-by-weekend basis. Activities in our lovely Washington were fair game as were trips to adjoining states and our northern neighbor. Hello Canada!
Here is a quick recap of the places we went:
Here is a quick recap of the places we went:
We started off (in early spring) with a trip up to Vancouver for the 2010 Olympics. We saw some great cross country skiing races, a closing ceremony, and a concert by Nelly Furtado.
Later in the years we headed down to the WA Coast to see explore Chris' paternal grandfather's place o' birth. We stayed in a yurt and flew kites on the beach.
For Memorial Day we took the Clipper to Victoria to see Eric sail in the Swiftsure Regatta and to explore lovely Vancouver Island. And by explore, we mean eat fish and chips at every pub we could find...
In July, we went backpacking in the Olympic National Park, camping on the beach at Cape Alava, strolling through the Hoh Rainforest, and enjoying a picnic lunch atop Hurricane Ridge.
We went river floating with Megan and Eric in Leavenworth. We ate a picnic on the beach, navigated a few rapids, and hauled out just as the thunder and lightning began rolling overhead.
In late August we headed east to the Coleville National Forest and spent the night at a Forest Service cabin. 10 miles, with a backpack, at significant elevation, AND 3.5 months pregnant? No problem, baby!
And, last on our list was our quickie trip to Montana to visit Alex. Technically, this one might not qualify as 'local' since we added a thousand miles to Pepe's odometer, but it definitely fit into the 'adventurous weekend road trip' category, hence its inclusion in this post. I'm also giving us props for driving through Idaho, which meets our neighboring state criteria. Plus it was an awesome trip. No further explanations required.
Things on the list that we didn't accomplish?
Things on the list that we didn't accomplish?
-Exploring Mt. St. Helens. This was a major fail. We have no good excuse for not going.
-Soaking in Gold Meyer Hot Springs. Eh, we have a semi-decent excuse for this one, namely, that the road was washed out and the four of us were without mountain bikes. And, frankly, the thought of lugging my pregnant self over 15 miles of dirt road...on a mountain bike....not jumping up and down with excitement for this particular trip.
We had a few awesome non-northwest trips, namely our cruise up to Alaska with the Family (although I suppose this could count as since AK is way more 'northwest' than WA, OR, or ID... Plus we started in Vancouver BC. Aha! Add another one to our list of local northwest trips!)
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| Photo credit: Alex J |
We also zipped down to the Bay Area for a wedding. And a wee bit o’ hiking at Point Reyes National Seashore.
All in all, it was a fantastic summer and we enjoyed seeing a bit more of this great country. Maybe that should be 'countries' plural, as we have lots o' love for Canada, too.
We have a few more excursions planned for the Autumn season but we'll wait until they occur before detailing them here. We'll also be enjoying said trips at a more relaxed pace as I'm not currently up for another frenetic season of adventuring.
