Olympic Peninsula Part 1

Every year, Dusty and I have contemplated going somewhere for our anniversary. We have talked about Disneyland, Victoria, and various other places. It seemed that every year, I was either out of town for a training, stuck at work for the weekend due to quarter end duties, or lack of funds. This year, we were determined to go somewhere.

Dusty has always had the idea of driving around the Olympic peninsula, but I didn't want to go and just drive. We decided this was a good opportunity to do it, and through in some activities along the way to make a weekend out of it.

We started out early Saturday Morning, and crossed over the Tacoma narrows bridge and went north up through Bremerton. Our first stop was Sequim. It is a little retirement community and what seems like a one street town. We ate breakfast at a little restaurant that was very quaint. It was neat to see the wait staff talk to the regular customers and greet them by name. I want to live some place like that when I retire.

The next stop was Port Angeles. We were planning on stopping in the city, but when we drove through, it looked neat, and we stopped to look at a few things.

Down by the water. There were lots of big ships in the water, and beautiful.

Dusty by the Rocktopus statue. It is a Giant Pacific Octopus (Commonly found in the Puget Sound) made out of rocks. It was very cool.
By the water, was the huge tower to look out over the water. It was really tall, and it swayed a little in the wind. It was also a very sunny, but cold time down by the water.

We then moved on to the Salt Creek Tide Flats. It is a huge area of continuous tide pools. We saw lots of barnacles, sea urchins, hermit crabs, anemones, sea urchins, and lots of kelp. Here are a few pictures of the Tide PoolsTide Flats

Anemones
Barnacles (that little red thing is the muscle. It was actually moving.
Sea Urchin
Next to the Tide Pools was this little beach. It was very pretty.

The next stop we made was Forks. The weather was starting to act up a little there, but we were able to do the Twilight tour. We found that the once Logging town, is now basically the Twilight town. I think half the people there were tourists, going on the same 30 minute 6 stop tour as we were, and the other half were people who lived there selling Twilight stuff.

I will admit, I prefer the description of Forks in the books much more than the actual town, but it was fun to go and see how Forks has made a fictional story appear like it is real.

Bella's Truck in front of the Forks visitor center. (The visitor center was full, but right next door was the logging museum which was empty - A little sad.)

Swan Residence
Cullen Residence (It is a B&B right next to the police station. Too bad it couldn't have been further out of town.)
Dr. Cullen's Parking spot at the Hospital.
Forks High School (It is actually Quillayute High)
Despite the couple twilight sites, this is really what Forks was like. This is in the middle of the Thriftway. Every other, if not every, store in town sold Twilight stuff and even every restaurant had a Twilight special include Subway. haha.