Port Angeles and Olympic National Park

Later in the afternoon, we took yet another ferry, this time to Port Angeles. 

We did not intend for this leg of our journey to take so long, so we ended up staying overnight in Port Angeles (which has nothing much angelic about it, according to Lonely Planet). But we did find this to be one of the most friendliest places so far! Even a gas station attendant provided us with more tourist info than your average tour guide.

We had dinner at the surprisingly good, hipster Soho Asian Bistro, and stayed at the surprisingly good Olympic Lodge. The delay in our travels was a good thing. Having my own personal pool and hot tub was a bonus.

Oh yes! Before I forget, allow me to resolve the cliffhanger from an earlier post. Right before we left Victoria, we had mailed Joanna her condo/garage keys that I had kept by accident. And then when we unpacked our stuff at the Olympic Lodge, I realized we had forgotten our garment bag in our last hotel... in Victoria. It had our wedding dress attire, and some other dressy clothes - so we'll survive. Lucky for us, the hotel still had it, and we arranged to have Rich pick it up for us.

Next day was a day of sights, at Olympic National Park. Getting there was beautiful in itself:

We also passed by a town that is quite popular with teen girls. For those familiar with the Twilight series, it is based in Forks, Washington. We had not known this beforehand, but couldn't help it when encountering a few Twilight-focused shops.

Neither Sharon nor I are familiar with the books/movies, but I imagined that if a vampire or werewolf were to come out of those magical forests and approach us, we'd probably tell them how cute they are.

Onward to massive Olympic park, one of the few temperate rainforests in the world. Our first inland trip was to Hoh forest, where lush vegetation is EVERYWHERE.

... and the firs are MASSIVE:

(Sharon is at the end of this fallen tree)

After spending some time hiking the Hoh, we continued the drive south and checked out a couple of beaches:

Searching for clams

Searching for meaning

Searching for critters to talk to

After the coast, I hadn't had enough forest, so we drove around Lake Quinault. I'd include some more pictures but haven't, because:

1) the internet connection at this point in time is incredibly slow uploading pictures,

2) it looks much the same as the Hoh forest above, and

3) we didn't take many pictures of the Quinault forest because I was driving and Sharon was scared to death.

Why was she scared to death? Because:

4) it was getting darker and darker as we progressed through the thick canopy, and the increasing fog wasn't helping,

5) the road got narrower, especially when we were beside cliffs that sharply dropped off,

6) there was nobody around for miles to hear our screams should we fall off the cliff,

7) ...and she could tell I was starting to get a little scared myself, because of how nicely I was acting towards her.

Obviously we survived and caught a few more nice scenes on our way out:

That was enough excitement for the day - and we headed down to Oregon into the night.