olympic peninsula

After some touristing activities in Seattle, we piled two parents, a daughter, a boyfriend, two dogs, and a lot of stuff into one little audi, and started driving. We took the ferry over to the Olympic peninsula, and it started raining. Lots of low clouds, and rain. We decided to drive up to Hurricane ridge anyway, to see if maybe we got above the clouds up there, and then we found out that the dogs weren't allowed off the pavement in the parking lot, because this was in a national park. Silly rules. So we drove uphill for 17 miles anyway, only saw one rider (in that weather, the uphill wouldn't have been so bad, but the downhill would have been hell), and popped in and out of the mist until we got up to the visitor center. The mist was beautiful, in its way, but it was raining heavily enough that we decided that having wet dogs on our laps for the next couple hours in the car was not worth a walk in the rain with a universal view.

Headed back down, occasionally stopping to take pictures, and then realized everyone was in desperate need of a nap, so we checked in to a hotel instead of looking for a beach to run around on. Day two, I found a trail to run on (instead of pavement) in the morning, which started the day out right. First stop was this mountain thing my mom had read about in a brochure, which turned out very difficult to find. Got there, though, and there are some awesome forests out there; giant trees and all ferns underneath. I would hate to have been the first people through this area; I would likewise hate to orienteer out there.

Next stop was Rialto beach, and this was awesome. It stopped raining, and the sun came out, and there were these amazing sea stacks. The dogs get so confused by the salt water; Rudi tried to drink it at one point and made the most amusing faces trying to spit it back out. Neither dog wanted to get their feet wet so spent a lot of time skittering around avoiding waves. Eventually we got out to the arch, a giant sea stack that was still connected at the top. It all looked pretty pirate-ish to me. Ed found a piece of driftwood that looked like a perfect bludgeoning stick, and sort of looked like a caveman the whole walk. He claims he was looking for baby seals to bludgeon; its good we didn't see any.

The last day we went to another beach, at Kalaloch rocks, but it was pouring rain, which meant we got to sit with sandy, wet, beagles the whole drive home. We swung by a rainforest, just to check it out, and it was very different than the rainforests I'd seen in New Zealand--very open and light, not at all as dense as I remembered. An abundance of moss hung from anything that would provide a purchase point, and everything was sopping wet, probably because we were walking around a swamp in the rain. Not the sort of place I would try to farm, although evidently people did that back in the day.

Once back in Seattle Ed and I went down to the market to go buy a fish. They'll box up whole salmon for you to take on the plane (or send to someone) that are good for 48 hours. So, we bought a fish. The fish markets are so darn cool there. I wish Boston had something similar. I'm sure it does, I just don't know where to go. So we ended up in Cincinnati to see Ed's sister, and we ate fish. This makes it maybe 5 nights in a row that I've eaten salmon. Man I love that stuff.

Back to Boston on monday. I feel like I need to find some sort of weekday race its been so long. Wish I had been around for mt. snow, I need a good ass-whoopin. Oh well, rest weeks are good too.