Olympic National Park

We left Seattle as early as possible for the Olympic Peninsula. We had a beautiful ride across on the ferry in the early morning and a really pretty drive up to Port Angeles with the help of our new friend TOM TOM ( who we adore even though he yells at us sometimes..oh don't worry TOM TOM is our GPS device care of Elena's parents).
As usual we were trying to fit way to much into one day and were determined to do two hikes today and one hike tomorrow. Our goal was to see Hurricane Ridge, spend some time in the Hot Springs of Sol Duc and make our way over to Ho Rain forest on the other side of the park. But the park is big...really big and all that turned out to be a little too much to squeeze into a whole day.

When we did finally go into the ranger station and try and figure out our routes we realized we may not have planned far enough ahead so we decided to enjoy one thing thoroughly rather than try to hurriedly see everything! We drove up as far as we could to Hurricane Ridge and it was beautiful, there we did a relaxed two hour hike further up Hurricane Hill. We saw so much wild life! We saw so many deers that by the end of the hike I was completely unfazed when the deer just walked right up to us on the trail. We also saw lots of pretty mountain birds whose names I do not know, and this beautiful mountain hare who came right up to Elena's feet and was twitching his ears for the camera. The weather was just beautiful, clear skies, sunny with crisp cool air, the perfect hiking climate.

During the hike up Elena was even teaching me some new Dutch phrases and helping me with my grammar! She wanted me to teach her something in return and I kindly reminded her that I had already taught her so many valuable lessons with my oh so infinite wisdom...and that if that was not good enough that I would teach her how to rock climb...so stay tuned!

On the way down the mountain we were trying to plan where to stay when the car started acting up. We got down fine but we are now thinking we may have to take CC to a mechanic tomorrow. However, we did talk to a few "car" people and they said it may have just been a tough climb for her and the change in temperature could have caused these problems. So we are now praying/crossing our finger/ thinking positively that these people are right and that we will not have to deal with CC and her "special needs" tomorrow.
Because we were worried about the car we ended up choosing a more central camp site rather than somewhere in the park. We actually decided on a KOA which Tim had told us was really cheap, and it has turned out to be really nice! For thirty dollars we got clean toilets and showers, a hot tub and pool and free internet access! We ended up having a great night, we set up our tent and jumped in the Hot tub and then ate our cold dinner followed by hot roasted SMORES and lots and lots of laughter (tonight we were the annoying neighbors)!!!

I will not pretend that Elena and I are experts at starting a fire and I think we burned more newspaper than anything else...but we have to have the semblance of a fire at least ONCE while we are camping!

Now Elena is fast asleep and I am typing on my blog in our tent!!! The wonders of modern camping...it may not be the romanticized wilderness experience but there is definitely something to be said for it!

Night everyone, we miss you and please think good/mechanically healthy and functioning thoughts for CC (our car)
loveeee
E&A