Seattle and Olympic National Park

Downtown Seattle from the ferry.

You can take a girl out of the city but you can't take the city out of the girl.

OMG, an original Mini, even a right hand driver toboot!

We headed to downtown Seattle today. I really do love the city, people rushing here and there, cyclists riding their bikes, and the noises. It was a nice change of scenery. As we were headed to the Pike Place Market we happened to pass, "more like follow", an original mini cooper. Of course I'm telling Scott to not lose it because I really wanted a picture, I've never seen an original in person.





We headed over to the open market, it was cool. Just about anything you could need or want, from halibut cheeks (YUM), produce, to clothes. We also stopped by the Pike Place Fish place but they wren't tossing any fish today.

Windy ferry ride.

After downtown we took a ferry to head over to Olympic National Park. This is the second ferry that we've taken where we drive our car onto the boat. We got some really good views of the city and Mt. Rainier. The ferry dropped us off on an island and it was soooo nice. The homes were unbelievable; situated on the shore with beach access and views. Unfortunately at about that time it started to sprinkle. We left the island via a bridge and were on the main land again headed to the park.
 

Mt. Rainier from the ferry.

Olympic National Park is different in that you don't drive through the park instead you drive the perimeter. I was wondering on our way to the park about what could be unique about this one compared to the others that we've seen and sure enough. Olympic National Park is made of of three regions; a rainforest, coast, and then the mountainous terrain.

Olympic National Park - Rainforest

It was beautiful driving around the park. Again, the trees were super sized and covered with moss. The rainforest sections were like an enchanted forest, just beautiful. The cloud ceiling was low so the clouds just sat in the trees. In some places you could see the mountain peeks sticking out of the clouds and in other places your couldn't see anything but cloud cover. Unfortunately we didn't get a chance to do a hike because the rain had really picked up by that point in time. This is definitely a place worthy of a second and third visit.

On a side note, as we drove around the National Park we went through Port Angeles and Forks, WA. Since I'm a Twilight fan I thought that was cool. It's amazing how much Forks is monopolizing on the movie with their Twilight firewood and Twilight tours...but who could blame them, Forks is a small town and prior to the books and movies probably didn't even get a second glance!

We headed back to Portland in the evening. We ended up spending 12 hours in the truck today, neither Scott or I expected that. I wish we didn't have to get in the truck again for a week, but no such luck. I keep telling myself that Vegas is a couple weeks away and that I won't have to ride in a car for three full days!

Life is good and we had a great time in Seattle.