Pacific Northwest--Portland, the Gorge Amphitheatre, Seattle, Olympic National Park

At the end of May, we took an awesome 10-day vacation out to the Pacific Northwest. It was beautiful, refreshing, exciting, and everything a vacation should be. We explored Portland, went to a music festival at The Gorge Amphitheater, visited Seattle, and hung out at Olympic National Park. It's a beautiful region and somewhere I'd be happy to visit again!

We landed in Portland early afternoon on Wednesday, 5/23, which happened to be my best friend's last day in Portland on business. It was really cool to get to hang out with her--we went to Hair of the Dog Brewery and sampled LOTS of beers, then had a delicious dinner at Portland City Grill, up 30 floors with great views of the city and all of its bridges--plus snowcapped Mt. Hood, Mt. St. Helen and Mt. Adam. We watched the sun set while the city slowly lit up. Really cool!

View from Portland City Grill

Thursday in Portland, we had a lazy morning, then went to a tasty breakfast spot called Jam On Hawthorne for a crazy good breakfast, and the perfect bloody mary I needed to nip my mild hangover! We did some wandering and shopping along Hawthorne, and in the evening, stopped at Bridgeport Brew Pub for a beer before heading to the Green Dragon, one of Rogue's beer halls. They have 50 taps and a cool vibe. 

Friday morning we were off to the middle of Washington state for the Sasquatch Music Festival. Definitely the coolest music venue I've ever visited. A few of my musical highlights for the weekend include Of Monsters and Men, Santigold, Jack White, The Head and the Heart, and Beck. We had perfect weather the whole time, the scenery was gorgeous, and we had awesome neighbors to hang out with. Pure bliss!

From Sasquatch it was on to Seattle. We stayed at one of the circular Westin towers, which was really cool with some views of the city and the water. We were pretty exhausted, but did some strolling around, visited the Klondike Gold Rush NHS, had a little happy hour at the Tap House, then dinner at Gordon Biersch before making it an early night! 

Wednesday morning we enjoyed putzing around Pike Place Public Market for a while. It was really cool! We had breakfast (including piroshkies from Piroshky, Piroshky, which was recommended to us by friends at Sasquatch), bought an ornament to commemorate the trip, bought some fancy pasta and oils for ourselves and my father-in-law for Father's Day, and just enjoyed the vibe. 

Finally, it was on to Olympic National Park. It was late afternoon when we got to Port Angeles and stopped at the main visitor's center. From there, it was another 45 minutes or so along Lake Crescent to get to the Fairholme campground, where we planned to stay. We were running low on daylight, so we stopped for a couple of very short little walks. First up was Marymere Falls. It was so nice to finally get into the park, and the old growth Douglas firs draped with mosses were a real treat. The 90-foot waterfall was lovely, and we ended up chatting for 20 minutes with a couple we met at top--the man was from Bucks County and was wearing a Phillies hat! Small world.

We explored the shore of Lake Crescent for a bit and did some more wandering, where we saw lots of black-tail deer, Douglas squirrels, wildflowers, and beautiful, mossy, old trees. We headed back to the campsite and had the whole area to ourselves--which was nice, because it was raining pretty hard, so we used the overhang of the bathrooms for shelter to cook dinner! The mossy campsite was gorgeous and the rain on the tent all night was really relaxing. I woke up early to the distant, long, one-tone whistle of what I later learned was the varied thrush. It was so relaxing to just lay there listening to the raindrops and the birds!

When we finally rolled out of the tent on Thursday morning, we whipped up some breakfast (before this trip, I'd forgotten how much I love oatmeal) before packing up and heading to the Hoh Rain Forest area of the park. We did a bunch of small loops here--Spruce Nature Trail and Hall of Mosses--to check out a different area of the park. The Spruce Nature Trail meets the bank of the Hoh River, and includes parts of incredible old growth forest, and also some new growth carved out where the Hoh used to flow or has flooded in the past. I wish we had more time to do some serious hiking, but alas, there was too much we wanted to see and do in the region!

But, at any rate, this area of the park was just gorgeous. There weren't a lot of people, and the massive trees, mossy growth, nurse logs, birds (that varied thrush again!) and rain drops (it didn't rain while we were walking, but the previous night's rain was still dripping from the trees) combined for the most mystical, fairytale walk ever. Since Eric and I were taking turns with our fancypants new camera, we weren't always walking immediately together, and wandering "alone" in this area was definitely one of my favorite (and most relaxing) memories from the trip!

Low clouds over the Hoh River

Nurse log! So cool. 

Uprooted.

From the Hoh Rain Forest, we headed west... to the beach! We made a few stops along the way, enjoying the "Big Sitka spruce" and "Big Douglas fir tree" signs and pushing through a few short overgrown trails to see what else we could find. It was grey and dreary, but we thoroughly enjoyed scenery and growth unlike what we're used to back east.

I don't think I realized before planning this trip that Olympic National Park included miles of Pacific Coast. We did the Kalaloch area, which includes Ruby Beach and a handful of other beaches several miles apart. We hit Ruby, the northernmost of these beaches, first, for Eric's first glimpse of the Pacific Ocean. It was rocky and I was stunned by the driftwood--hundreds of big tree trunks. Ruby Beach is just south of where the Hoh River dumps into the ocean, and if I understood the interpretive signs correctly, all those trees are brought down from the forests by the rivers, spend their time at sea, and then eventually wash up. They were all smooth from being battered by the sea and salt air... it was pretty cool. Here we were treated to TONS of mussels, barnacles, anemones, and other delightful and weird marine creatures. We spent some time at each beach, making our way slowly south down the coast, taking tons of pictures, and absorbing as much as we could about the plants, animals and scenery we were seeing. At one beach, we even saw a bald eagle, sitting regally high above in a tree. I was thrilled--this was basically my main goal for the trip! We watched the bird for quite some time, hoping to see it take flight, but no luck. And since we didn't yet buy a nice zoom lens for the new camera, we didn't get good pictures, either, but we have the memory!

Mussels and barnacles at Ruby Beach. Fun fact: Mussels sound like Rice Krispies. Snap, crackle, pop!

Piddock clams rock back and forth to create these holes in rocks. 

Anemone!

Eventually we made our way to the Kalaloch campsites and scored a perfect site on a bluff just over the ocean. I was literally giddy and was tempted to just lay down, listen to the ocean, and read a book, but Eric was still in the mood to walk, so we spent more time exploring the beach and an interesting forest area just off the beach. Cameraless this time, we had another bald eagle sighting, and also a great view of some other badass bird of prey (raptor? a different kind of eagle?). We headed back to camp to cook up yet another freeze-dried dinner and watch the sun set slowly into the ocean--that's right, the clouds parted for a few hours to give us this very special treat! But, not surprisingly, before the sun had completely set, the clouds returned and it started raining. No worries--we took plenty of reading material into the tent and got settled in. It poured all night, but I certainly can't complain about laying in a tent listening to the ocean and the rain all night.

If you ask me how I define "perfect," this will be my response.

Friday morning--our last day of vacation before leaving--it was still pouring, so we packed up as best we could and headed out. We weren't quite ready to leave the park, though, so we made a stop at the Quinault Rain Forest to squeeze in one last (very rainy) stroll through the park. This walk led us to the old Kestner homestead, which was pretty cool. Apparently the Kestner family built a little life for themselves here in the late 1800s. I'm not sure how long it's been abandoned, but it was pretty funny to see all of the deer appreciating the shelter left by the abandoned buildings.

From there we said goodbye to Olympic National Park and started south, planning to check out Astoria (Lewis and Clark National Historic Park) on the way back to Portland, where our flight would leave early Saturday morning. It was a nice drive, and we stopped at a few different portions of the interpretive trail and different landmarks about Lewis & Clark's journey. Sidenote--the main thing that led us to include this on our trip? We recently watched Ken Burns' documentary about the expedition. It was so fantastic and gave us a new appreciation for that particular story of the country's history.

It was evening by the time we got back to Portland, so we got a hotel near the airport, had dinner at a nearby pub, and called it an early night, with that sort of satisfied exhaustion that only comes from an excellent vacation. Every single section of the trip was better than expected--Portland, Sasquatch at the Gorge, Seattle, Olympic National Park--and this is a region we will definitely want to explore again!