After a fun evening with our friends Kyle, Lacey and Emberlynn, we headed out early Thursday morning to Olympic National Park. Again, the Olympic Mountain Range had a completely different landscape than others we have seen. These were tall, dark mountains with snow caps on top. The valleys were a deep, dark green. The air was crisp, but it was warm enough to wear shorts and a t-shirt. We attended a Ranger Talk and learned about the different types of rocks you will find in the Olympic Range. Then, we hiked up the trail and this was by far the steepest hike we've done. I was certainly out of breath. Joe, Erin and Megan continued on the last bit of the hike up to Sunrise Point. Anna and I just couldn't do it, so we waited below. From Sunrise Point you can see the Cascade Mountain Range in Canada, as well as the Olympic Mountain Range. Again, the views are just mind blowing and fascinating. We even had snow on the trail that we got to tromp over. Snow in July...who knew, but how fun! We saw several does and fawns along the trail, the 2 fawns pictured were only a month old. We were only able to visit Hurricane Ridge, one outlook of the massive Olympic Park, so we will have to go back again one day to visit the other parts. It's too much to do in one day because of the distance you must drive between outlooks.
On the way back to our friend's house, we stopped at Purple Haze, a lavender farm. Anna and I enjoyed smelling all the yummies in the gift shop. Then she tried a lavender lemonade and I had a lavender tea. It was such a cute, little lavender shop, I wish we could have stayed longer.
We finally made it back to our friend's house with pizza in hand. We had a fun time of catching up and spending time together. I am so glad we have all these stops planned with friends. Most of the people we are seeing were in our life group at church at some point in time. It's so wonderful to catch up with them and see the kids growing up. Emberlynn's big sisters were out of town, but we had fun getting to know her and loving on her. She was 8 weeks old the last time we saw her.
WOW!!
ReplyDelete