An Enjoyable Vacation

Hello to our readers. Time for an update. And this time I will share the highlights of our just completed vacation up the west Washington coast. We left a week ago Saturday and returned home last Wednesday, so we had the better part of a week's vacation. We had originally planned to drive south into the Redwoods. Pam had never experienced them and we thought that would be a great time for a few days. However we were both taken with the beauty of the Olympic National Forest and Park in northwestern Washington when we were there for my aunt Haroldine's 80th birthday party just a couple of weeks ago, and so we changed our plans and decided to amble up the Washington coast and discover what's there.

And we were not disappointed! The west Washington coast is, in a word, simply beautiful! Spectacular beaches, immense stretches of tall green forests, alluring rivers, and beautiful lakes greeted us as the pictures below will show.

We had no specific agenda, so we were free to turn off and explore the unusual as well as the sights. For example when we came upon a sign that said "giant red cedar tree" we hauled back on the horses and took the turn...and were not disappointed. Another time we ambled through a huge antique shop, and even stopped in at a garage sale or two. We visited a covered bridge from the turn of the century on one side excursion and gazed at the beautiful Gray's River. So you can tell that we felt a real freedom to explore and discover.

We stayed in state and federal campgrounds each night, driving to the campground and setting up our camp in the early part of the day and then exploring till dusk, only to repeat the next day to a different camp "up the road". We had beautiful weather with not a single drop of rain and warm temps everywhere we went. I even commented to the duty person at the check point on our drive out of the Olympic Rain Forest National Park that we had come all this way to see some rain, and nothing! He smiled. Anyway, it was a wonderfully enjoyable trip, with incredible scenery and discoveries around each new bend. We want to go back now and enjoy it all over again and I wouldn't be suprised if next summer we do. Why don't some of you plan to come and join us and we will make a caravan of it! I am sure there is a "dollar in the sand" waiting for each of you!

Blessings to all.

Walt

P.S. You can click on each of the pics to get an enlarged view.