So as we leave my parents in Seattle for their…

So as we leave my parents in Seattle for their flight home we embark on a quick trip around Washington and Oregon. After leaving the airport we made it up the east side of Olympic National Park to Port Angeles and started out our next morning with donuts from Cock-a-Doodle Donut which had to serve as a late birthday donut, but these were not Tim Hortons, probably better in fact, as we started our first full day back in the Pacific Northwest. We started out heading to Olympic National Park and managed to make it most of the way around the park in our first full day out and about. We entered the park on the North side and made it to Hurricane Ridge and took in some great views of Mt. Olympus and even got to see some deer on a quick dirt road adventure near the end of the pavement at the visitors center and caught Madison Falls on the way West around the top of the park. We headed to Sol Duc from here and although the lodge at the end is nothing too spectacular we did grab lunch and got to see salmon spawning, or at least attempting to, on the Sol Duc river at the Salmon Cascades. Rialto Beach was our next point of interest and did not disappoint, massive driftwood lined the shores of this spectacular black pebble beach like nothing I’ve ever seen before, so a new experience there! Hoh Rain Forest was next on the way counter clockwise around the park and the trees around this area were absolutely gigantic and worth the stop! Unfortunately about this time we started to run out of daylight, we got a couple twilight photos of a beach on the West Washington coast and headed to Aberdeen for the evening. The next morning we kept heading south along the coastline and wandered upon a cranberry farm where we learning about the cultivation and harvest of cranberries, seeing as though most of our knowledge of cranberries comes from Ocean Spray commercials, this was quite informative. As we continued down the coast we stopped to see the seastacks at Cannon Beach which were also awesome, but in stark contrast to Rialto, this beach was sandy. Oddly enough, you can, like on many Florida and Texas beaches I remember, drive out onto the beach. Driving onto the beach in a two wheel drive rental car is not the best idea I’ve ever had even though I have affectionately come to name our current rental the “T-Rax.” It is in fact nothing of the sort, other than the fact both have short comings. The T-Rex with it’s short arms and the T-Rax with it’s pesky open diff and front wheel drive. After our brief tire airing down session, fielding Misty’s complaints, and 100 meter reverse sprint out of the soft sand we were back on our way south down the Oregon coastline. We made it as far south as Tillamook, yes, the same place that makes the cheese, ice cream, and other dairy goodies. We took the short, self guided factory tour, ate about as much ice cream as we could manage in one sitting and headed back for one more West coast sunset at Rockaway Beach before heading into the center of weirdness that is known as Portland.