Seattle, WA / Olympic National Park, WA

Hey everyone! Well, it's been a while since we caught you up on what we were doing. We're now in Portland, but, as most of you know, we went to Bogota, Colombia for 10 days and never was able to catch up since our Victoria blog.... so here ya go...

So, we got to Seattle on July 3. So for the 4th (and in prep for our trip to Colombia), we decided to get a hotel room TWO nights in a row, to get some solid rest before we took off. So we landed in Kent, WA, just south of Seattle, and went to see the fireworks at a nearby suburb on Lake Washington...

Before the show....

Nell's annual 4th of July salute.

The Space Needle

We went to the famous Pike Place Market

The one and only - famous Pike Place Starbucks - the first one.

If I came here a year or two a go, this would have been a bigger deal, but I've definitly had better coffee since this road trip (and I'm also in the coffee snob capital of the world right now - Portland, so that may be a reason for my backpedaling. I'm a bit of a poser??... so what.)

Fresh fish at the market-yummy.

Far back on the horizon is Mt. Rainer. We didn't see it the whole time we were in Seattle but as we were flying in from Bogota, it was a crystal clear day and it was beautiful...

So, that was it for most of our time in Seattle. We saw some of the downtown but didn't get a real good feel for it and we had limited pictures. But we enjoyed our time there. From here on is our time after Seattle when we landed there and headed west to Olympic National Park.

Olympic National Park...

This park is actually kind of split up. There is the main part that is mostly found tucked into the furthest NW parts of Washington State in the mountains and forests, then there a small strip along the coast. We went to both.

ONP on the coast. We camped out on the beach and heard about this that was just a few miles up from where we were.



This might have been Nell's favorite part of our entire trip. The reason: her passion for tidepools.



These are sea anemones. These, along with starfish, clams, barnicles, and other sea creatures cover almost every inch of these rocks.

My beautiful bride.

These were huge, actually.. maybe the size of my hand or bigger.

The purple and orange things are starfish.

Sea Anemones up close and personal.

Starfish.

Clams and barnicles covered this rock.

Nell.

The bridge we crossed from the trail to the beach.

The trail on the coast.

Now onto the mainland where we played in the biggest temperate rainforest in North America... (true story. We were in the Hoh Rainforest where you can hike amongst huge Doug Firs, Spruce and Western Hemlocks that are so high actually create a completely diffent ecology in their tops.)

This is a creek that we took a picture into. Look how clear it is.

On the trail.

Nell liked the moss on the phone.

Nell walking tall amoung the doug firs.

Nell did a cartwheel

I break danced

The ferns were pretty neat.



The trees are so big

The rainforest's fungus.

Big tree.

We have no clue what this was...Any ecologists out there want to explain?
(It's of a weird, jello-y substance)




Olympic National Park was amazing. It was definitely a cool thing to come back to after a great trip to Colombia. We're working on our Colombia blog, so it will be up in a day or so. We have a ton of pictures to go through, so it's taking a little longer. We're glad to be back in the blog world so we can update everyone on our whereabouts!