Olympic Peninsula

A few weeks ago, my brother Jared asked if we wanted to join them on the Olympic Peninsula for Labor Day weekend. Sure I said, before I realized just how long of a drive and just how short I time we would be spending there. The original idea was to spend Friday in Seattle before driving to the house we rented on Saturday, spending Sunday there and then driving home on Monday.

But then we decided to send Matthew to Disney World and he needed a ride to the airport on Saturday morning, so instead of going to Seattle, we booked a hotel in Portland and had a family adventure there - Powell's, Ben and Jerry's, hotel pool, and movie in our room. The kids were just as happy as if we actually had gone to Seattle.

Saturday we drove the rest of the way to the Olympic Peninsula, all 5 hours. After 4 hours we were all ready to get out of the car. The only thing is, the beaches and the 101 in Washington are very different than in Oregon. In Oregon, there are beach parks with parking and bathrooms and sand. In Washington, the beaches are marked by signs like "Beach 3" and have a clearing on the side of the road to park in the dirt. We found a by-the-beach campsite that thankfully had bathrooms we could use but it was definitely not a place to stay and play at the beach. So we found "Beach 3", parked on the side of the road and found at least 20 intact sand dollars in the same amount of time. We eventually had to stop picking them up because there was no additional space in my hands to hold them. There is also an inordinate amount of driftwood on Washington beaches so the kids had fun climbing on and under all the massive logs.

 All weekend long, Luca was adamant that she did not want to do the hike her uncle Jared had planned for Monday on the way home. She didn't want to do it on Saturday, she didn't want to do it on Sunday, and she still didn't want to do it Monday morning, but at the top of the Olympic Peninsula National Park there is the only gift shop of the weekend. That and that alone is the reason for her being willing to go. And once we were there, and once she found a hat to love, and once I told her we only had to hike until we wanted to stop, she and Dude agreed and we all ended up having a better, longer, more beautiful hike than we anticipated. We saw fun wildlife, we saw gorgeous vistas, we had fun with cousins, and we got some good steps in.

We finally made it home at 7:30 and were ready for our lazy-day Tuesday before school started.

As always, thank you to my brother Jared for inviting us on his adventure and for pushing my children past what they thought they wanted to do. Fun weekend, even if we all agreed that we wished we could have had at least a couple more days to spend in the OP.