Olympic Size

 Of course when you hear the term Olympic size, it usually refers to the official Olympic Games sized pool.  However, contemporary usage refers to anything of large or gigantic proportions.  
Sunday, we went to the Olympic National Park on the Olympic peninsula or Washington.  Now the national park is not the largest (13th largest), but the peninsula  probably is the largest in the country.

I remember studying in grade school about Seattle seaport and the Gold Rush, etc and thinking it was right on the Pacific coast.  Not!  There's this big old land mass called the Olympic peninsula between Seattle and the Pacific.  We decided to explore it today.  From where we are staying, we opted for another ferry ride to get from here to the northern part of the the park.  Of course with the ferry service, you have to arrive no less than 30-60 minutes ahead or lose your reservation.  So I opted to aim to arrive 45 minutes ahead and it was an hour drive from hotel, so the on road again early.  It was foggy and here's a quick photo stop for a lake on the way and then evergreens everywhere photo.  You can definitely see why Washington's state motto is "Evergreen State."

The ferry docked at Port Townsend, a place that hubby went to on business back in the 70's.  Luckily a lighthouse was near town and it was still foggy.

Headed towards the park headquarters while discussing with hubby where I wanted to go and what I wanted to see.  Talk about Olympic-sized expectations!  I soon realized that everywhere we wanted to go would take a lot longer to get to than I planned and we had to get back to Port Townsend to catch the return trip ferry.....and be there 30-60 minutes ahead of time.  You probably can guess where this is going.... after a brief visit to park visitor center, we had to cull down our plans to one section, the rainforest.  

We did pass the beautiful Lake Crescent on the way.

Following are photos taken along the Hoh River road through the rainforest of Washington.

 A one point there was a sign for the Monarch of Trees.  Here, we saw the remains of one of the largest Sitka spruce trees in the world that fell about nine months ago in the wind.  Here Paul stands in front of the base.

Back to Port Townsend and here's their county courthouse build on the bluff overlooking the harbor!  Quite impressive when you sail into port.  

Speaking of sailing, a nice sail boat came into the harbor as we were waiting on the ferry.  Just Imagine that was yours!

By the time we got off the ferry, we decided that we didn't want to drive the hour back to hotel and then go and eat.  So we found Toby's Tavern in Coupeville on the waterfront and what a view we had.  That is Mount Baker (3rd highest peak in WA) in the distance (about 50 miles away).  Not too shabby of a way to end the day, eh?