Saturday, June 20, 2009

Washington Peninsula Trip

Those who know me know that I love to travel. So for one of this year's road trips I decided to drive up the Washington coast to see the forests and beaches on the peninsula. It was gorgeous! So here's my trip in pictures since words can't describe how beautiful it is :)
Starting with the forests: I saw the Hoh rainforest and hiked up into the alpine forests of the Olympic mountains.








The first place we stayed was Cape Disappointment. I have no idea why it is called that, but it was the ending place for the Lewis and Clark expedition in Washington. So I hiked a trail up to a lighthouse that roughly mirrored Clark's trail back in the 1800's!


Loving the ocean as I do, it wouldn't be a trip without seeing some awesome coastline. I saw beaches in Cape Disappointment, La Push's First Beach, Rialto Beach, and the coast line of Port Angeles.





The Olympic mountains were formed by receeding glaciers, and so there is a lot of rough, stony ground and jutting peaks that I loved hiking through!




We also saw some sweet waterfalls. This first one is Multnomah Falls, which is the 2nd highest continuous running waterfall in north america. The second is Wahkeena Falls, which is near Multnomah.

And it wouldn't be a trip up the peninsula without a pit stop in Forks :)


On the way home from Washington, I stopped in Portland and visited my friend, Sarah, who graduated with me from BYU's nursing program and now lives there with her husband and 2 kids. We went strawberry picking one day and then canned some into jam and dried some others. I felt very domestic :)

So other than the fact that my hair was a completely frizzy mess the entire time (thank you humidity) it was an amazing trip! In fact, I'm now going to plan a trip down the Oregon coastline and into the Redwood forest of northern California. Anyone want to come with? :)

5 comments:

  1. Gorgeous!! I still am in awe by the green-ness of it all! That is definitely now on my to see list. Wow!
    PS ~ Thanks for the Forks pics :) Your trip wouldn't have been complete without one.

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  2. Beautiful pics! Love the lighthouse. I've always wanted to see a real lighthouse but that hasn't happened yet :)

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  3. Beautiful beautiful! I can't believe you went to Forks and La Push! Did you meet any hot werewolves? ; )

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  4. you went to FORKS?!?!?!!?! i am so jealous!

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