Seattle

Most of my family left for the airport on Sunday morning.  It's hard to say goodbye, especially when I don't know for sure when I'll see everyone again.  Abraham's wedding, maybe!  (Don't be too much in a hurry, though, Abe.)  Abraham's flight wasn't until the afternoon, so he hung out with us after everyone else left.  We went to church at 11:00 and commented on how lucky the weather was for the wedding.  It was COLD and rainy and dark and cloudy just 24 hours after the perfect weather we had the day before.
After church we went on a short driving tour of downtown Seattle which I didn't particularly enjoy.  Downtown Seattle is built on a steep decline of the land going down to meet the ocean.  To get from the 5 to the waterfront requires driving down some very, very steep hills, like San Francisco!  And then to get back UP to the 5, you have to go back up those hills.  I did not enjoy this endeavor with the rainy, slick streets, and a car with accelerator and brake sensitivities different than what I am used to in the van.  Driving back up to get on the freeway, I had to stop at a stoplight, right on the steep hill.  When the light turned, I accelerated quickly because there was a car right behind me.  As I did so, the car shuddered as the wheels slipped on the wet pavement.  It was scary!  Anyway, just as we were getting back on the freeway to head to the airport, Abraham got a call that his flight was delayed an hour.  Ben wanted to go back downtown but I said "No way."  Instead we drove across the Puget Sound to a beautiful little island (peninsula maybe?) where we stopped to eat lunch and admire the Seattle skyline.

Abraham told me he needed a new Facebook profile picture, so I snapped this one of him.  I hope it fits the bill!

Brigham ate his bagel while sitting atop an old toppled piling sticking out over the water.  Doesn't he look like Abraham here?!

We had a great view of Seattle, and even saw a sea otter playing around in the water right in front of us.  Thanks for taking this picture of us, Abraham!  I love the way Mosey is looking at Ben and me with that funny expression.  :-)

There was a family of geese in the little park next to where we parked.  The daddy goose was not so happy about Mosey and Joseph approaching, until they started throwing pieces of bagel out for them.  I think the geese got more of Mosey's lunch than he did!

It had stopped raining by the time we got out here (obviously), but you can see how cloudy it was.  Seattle is still a beautiful city, though, cloudy or not.

We got back on the road to take Abe to the airport and we were almost there when he got another call informing him that the time of his flight had been moved UP about 25 minutes.  I raced into the airport, and he jumped out and ran into the terminal.  He made it through security in record time, only to get to the gate and discover it had been delayed once again.  Oh well, he needed the time to work on homework anyway.

Meanwhile, we headed south through Tacoma and across the famous Tacoma Narrows bridge (which was thankfully perfectly stationary as we drove across), and then up the Olympic Peninsula to Port Angeles.  This is a really, really beautiful drive.  It rained off and on but it had mostly stopped by the time we got to Port Angeles where we stayed the night.
Before going to our motel (the luxurious Super 8 Motel), we drove up into Olympic National Park, and parked at a trailhead just before the entrance to the Park.  The ever-intrepid Ben put me on his shoulders and we hiked up one of the trails probably close to a mile.  It was incredibly gorgeous, but really steep.  I wouldn't want to have been carrying me!  :-)
The boys loved it in the forest.  The huge trees and the hanging moss and the misty, mysterious atmosphere made us feel as though we were walking around on Misty Mountain out of The Hobbit.  It was quite dark under the trees, but I took a few pictures with the point-and-shoot Ben stuffed in his pocket before hitting the trail.

This is the view looking straight up into the treetops.  So beautiful and eerie!

I took this picture hoping to catch the perspective of the steep, steep trail we were on (this is on the descent and the boys are out in front of us).  Well, you can't really see that in the 2D image, but believe me, it was very steep.

Brigham immediately found some fallen trees to climb.  He was hoping to be able to climb one of the tall pine trees, but the branches were all way too high off the ground.  He is such a climber!

Here is Joseph exploring, looking for wildlife.  He might have seen some, except at the same time he was making very loud "bird calls," scaring away all birds for miles around.  As well as every other living creature, I'm afraid.  :-)

 When Ben stopped to rest a while, Joseph got to work trying to find grubs under the bark of this fallen, rotting log.  In "Man Versus Wild" Bear Grylls is always able to find juicy, tasty grubs pretty much anywhere he looks.  Joseph was not so lucky.  Maybe it's not grub season in the northwest?

 

 

 Brigham took a picture of Ben hauling me on his shoulders.  I had the best view of anyone, that's for sure!

Here's a video from the hike.  You can hear how every sound echoed through the woods.  It was cool!


Soon we had to head back because the light was fading fast.  We originally had planned to leave on a ferry to Victoria really early the next morning.  But we thought the National Park was so neat that we decided to stay through the next morning and catch the afternoon ferry across to Canada instead.