Olympic National Park

Overlooking Shi Shi Beach in Olympic National Park

ahhh.... Let me just start with a big sigh of relief! I just showered and it felt so nice to feel the dirt and grime from three days wash off of me. 

But lets rewind a little bit. The last time I updated you I was sitting in a GoodYear Auto Service Center. Since then we drove one hour out of Seattle to the next large town over, Tacoma, and spent the night in the local Walmart parking lot. Let’s just say we have found the most wasteful, lazy, and unproductive job for anyone out there that cares to know. While we were at Walmart, we noticed a “rent-a-cop” police truck driving throughout the parking lot one row at a time. Great! We love a safe parking lot. However, the man in the truck continued to drive up and down the rows for the next three hours, and he was their before we got their. Never once did he stop. Although we did see him following the every movement of three stereotypical “suspicious” boys. We mean driving right behind them to their car... anyway, that’s probably more details on that cop than you want.

We then woke up the next morning and drove the remaining two hours to the outskirts of Olympic National Park. Let me just tell you... this place was beautiful, and that’s saying something since we couldn’t see very much because it was extremely foggy both days that we were there. The first day we drove to Shi Shi Beach, which is one of the farthest northwestern points in the park. We had to hike 1.7 miles to the beach through mud, mud and more mud. We did alright avoiding the mud for the first mile, but then came the second mile and we had no chance. The beach was beautiful though - words could not describe its beauty and awesomeness. We saw a number of different starfish while we were there, as well as bald eagles! I am not sure that I have ever seen Ty so happy. 

The trail was a little muddy, just a little.

Ty climbed out to the coast to capture this shot!

After the beach we headed towards Forks, WA. Yup, you read it right. For all you Twilight crazed fans out there, we were there. To be honest though, it was pretty run down. We also looked it up, and none of the movies were actually filmed there. The town is very proud though. They have even marked the line in-between the territories. I got a good laugh out of that! 

That evening we stayed at Mora Campground. It was pouring the whole time though so we just stayed in the truck. However, it was nice not to have to brush our teeth in a public bathroom! The next morning we slept in (which was only until 7:00am because we are still slightly on eastern time), put our soaking wet shoes back on, and headed to the Hoh Rainforest. This was probably my favorite stop so far. Everything is so green and the trees are HUGE. It is crazy to think about everything that those trees have seen! Also, while we were walking on the trail we were both looking down and almost walked right up to a herd(?) of deer! They were so close and stunning! We definitely loved Olympic Park and can’t wait to come back some day. 

The Hoh Rainforest had some HUGE trees!

Nearly walked right into this deer and some of his friends while hiking!

The rest of today has been filled with driving. Our next destination is Yosemite National Park. So for your “Where In America Is Tyler and Kaddie”, we are currently in Eugene, Oregon where we have rented a motel room so that we could 1) finally shower, 2) wash our muddy clothes, and 3) charge all of our dead batteries. We have an outlet that plugged into our car, but it broke :( We are still about 11 hours from Yosemite and plan on getting their tomorrow. We are really excited to finally get to some warmer weather! The past two days have been cold, wet, and muddy, but they have also been our favorite! 

Until the next time we can update... love ty and kaddie