JandA Journeys: Great Summer Adventure 2018 -Installment Four - Washington

It's probably unfair to the state of Washington to divide it into two parts, but it will be forever remembered that way. More on the "after" in a bit.

After leaving McMinnville, we headed north on I-5 . Mt. St. Helens National Park was our first stop. It's amazing to see what is left of the mountain after the eruption in 1980. At the visitor center, we watched a video of the event - bringing to light the destruction of life and homes, and of course, the forests and mountain.

Squirrel at the edge of the parking lot entertaining us

Best view of Mt. St. Helens is from the Johnston Ridge Observatory

You can see the portion of the mountain that was blown away

We decided to drive along the Washington coastline on our way to the Olympic Peninsula and Chimacum, the location of our next campground. While scenic, it's not nearly as spectacular as the Oregon coast.

Washington Coast

Chimacum is a small town on the Olympic Peninsula. We especially enjoyed Port Townsend. It has a nice downtown area with interesting shops and a great ice cream store (Elevated Ice Cream - www.elevatedicecream.com ). Being right on the water, Port Townsend reminded us of towns on Cape Cod. The buildings are old and architecture unique.

These unique doors are the entrance to a bike shop

Part of downtown Port Townsend

Interesting looking place to eat but (not so) great food

On the Olympic peninsula there is a city called Sequim (pronounced Skwim). Known as the "Lavender Capital of North America" it is home to numerous lavender farms. The city re-invented itself in the late 90's as the previous industry of dairy was in decline. It was found the soil in the area were ideal for growing lavender. In 1997 the city celebrated it's first lavender festival.

Lavender Farm

While on the Olympic Peninsula, we decided to take the ferry from Port Angeles, WA to Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. We left our car in Port Angeles, and reserved a hotel room for one night in Victoria, taking the ferry back the next day. We walked around downtown (just happened to be there for their annual Pride parade and festival) and took a bus tour of the city. As a teenager I recall going to Canada with my parents and remembered how clean the cities were. I'm saddened to say Victoria did not live up to my expectations. We also saw homeless people, again, did not expect that.

Downtown tree art in Victoria

Our first attempt going to Olympic National Park had us turning around because of construction in the park. We would have had a 20-30 minute wait until the guide car came back for us. We didn't fare much better on our second attempt. This time we still had the road where there was only one lane for parts, but most of the back-up seemed to be at the entrance booth to the park. There was only one booth to handle the stream of traffic waiting to get in. (We've been at other national parks where they have an express lane for those of us who have senior passes.) We've made good use of our senior pass this summer using it for six different national parks. We've also been in several national recreational areas.

View taken from Hurricane Ridge Visitor Center

Another View

Campground reservations were hard to get in WA. Our original plan had been to spend a month in the Seattle area. But since we couldn't do that, we ended up with another campground in Bothell, WA. We had met Chris and Jenny in Red Bay at the service center, and we knew they were going to be in WA in July. So I reached out and sure enough, they were going to be there and we happened to end up at the same campground. But who would have thought that we would pull up to the office to register at the same time? Small world. It was great to catch up with them and enjoy a couple of meals together.

You can't do Seattle without seeing Pike's Place market. It seemed much bigger than the last time I had been there.

Bakery

Busy Place!

We also toured the Chihuly Garden & Glass Museum, featuring the works of Dale Chihuly, and the Museum of Pop Culture (MoPOP), founded by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen in 2000 as the Experience Music Project.