Epic Roadtrip Journal: 6/20/11 Olympic National Park

I woke up this morning and learned that sunrise was not a possibility due to intense cloud cover (yet again), so I went RIGHT back to sleep. We got up around 7:30, packed the tent up, and fled to the south eastern part of the park. We parked at a double trail head area (is that a phrase?) and had two short, but really fun hikes: Grove of the Patriarchs and Silver Falls. The former was a woody area with huge fir trees, almost as big as the Sequoias in California. It was a fun, relaxing hike, which ended with me hugging a 20 foot diameter tree.

Awwwww

The second hike went down to a cool, SLIPPERY waterfall area. There was a bridge and a lot of mist, which made for some really good pictures.

"We enjoy waterfalls."

We then drove north, along the side of Mt. Rainier (it was still covered in fog, so we couldn't see that fucking mountain) and on towards Olympic National Park over parts of the Puget Sound. We stopped for lunch and had some strawberry lemonade and I devoured a huge breakfasty meal (I love breakfast served all day). Then we drove into the northern part of the park, up an awesome-to-drive road along Hurricane Ridge. It was really fun to drive, and we got AMAZING views of the Puget Sound and of the incredible, snow-topped mountain range. The mountains, including the tallest, Mt. Olympus (guys, that's where the Gods live!), were gorgeous.

Standard Severino move right there

I was freaking out from how fucking beautiful they were. There were some black tail deer amidst the snow by the visitor center, but I'm still jaded by buffalo and bears in Yellowstone, so I didn't care too much for these boring-in-comparison animals.
The park itself is enormous. I didn't realize it, but most of the day required that we drive around the park to get to our campsite at Kalaloch beach. It was a LOT of driving, but luckily everything was beautiful, and there were tons of fireworks shops, and it was really fun to drive, so I didn't mind. I would have liked to hike more, but we just stopped for lookouts at Crescent Lake.
We managed to walk around at Ruby Beach, on the FUCKING PACIFIC COAST. There were tons of rocks to climb, and it was a beautiful landscape, so I was amped, naturally.

The ocean is on the wrong side of the land, but it's ok, it's still pretty

The Sun was also close to setting, so shadows made for some really cool pictures. I spent most of my time climbing the huge rock structures, because it was the most unsafe thing I could think of doing. Sometimes, while I was on top of the rocks, the waves would crash and spritz me with water: I felt like I was in Fantasia. That one with all the brooms? Yeah. Hilarious.

I am a pose machine

On the way back to the car we picked some wild raspberries. They tasted a little unsafe (that is a taste?), but whatever, I still haven't dropped a barf.
Then we drove to our campsite, which I had booked a while back. It was literally the last site with a beach overlook. And holy shit, when we arrived at the site, I almost crapped myself. The view from our site was amazing: RIGHT ON THE BEACH. It was cloudy, so sunset over the ocean wasn't possible, but who cares; it is still an incredible view.

This is the view we have to deal with from our campsite? UGH. FINE. I GUESS it's ok.

After setting up the tent, we made some dinner over the fire. Our mission was to use everything up, since it is our last camping night. MY personal mission was to dump the rest of the propane into the fire, since we can't take it back to the east coast with us. I did a good job of "accelerating" the fire with it. The dinner was good, but I'm just still so pumped about our perfect campsite location to even think about it. Also, I'm fairly tired from driving all day and not getting a chance to nap. If I had to describe the day in one word, it would be: Pumped.

Epic Roadtrip Journal: 6/19/11 Mt. Saint Helens/Mt. Rainier

Bear with me. This journal entry isn't the most optimistic of the trip. I think this might have been a turning point where we were all tired, the weather was shitty, and we had been within 100 yards of each other every moment for literally the previous 192 hours. It wasn't the greatest day of the trip. And when I say that, I of course mean that it was SLIGHTLY less than the greatest experience of my life. Because I'm comparing it to the rest of the trip, which is like comparing winning 500 tons of delicious bacon in the lottery with only winning 499 tons of delicious bacon. SOMEONE TELL ME HOW I CAN ENTER THE BACON LOTTERY PLEASE.

Mt. Saint Helens
We woke up to leave the hotel around 6am. I got another shower, which was amazing. But there really wasn't all that much that happened besides checking out of the hotel and driving to Mt. Saint Helens. Good story, I know.
Driving along the curvy roads toward the mountain, we realized that the weather might not cooperate with us. In fact, we drove through a cloud literally the entire way to the observatory. We got out to see what was supposed to be an amazing view of the mountain, but as Alex so aptly described it, it looked like we were on the inside of a ping pong ball. Fog everywhere. No view. Hooray. I haven't been this downtrodden on the trip since our dealings with the Canyon Campground people in Yellowstone (I recently wrote a review of the campground. I gave them the worst possible ratings due to "extreme incompetence"). Sorry for the less-than-terrific start to the trip, Colleen. Now we're just waiting in the car for the visitor's center to open. Coooooool. But we saw the movie they play before they dramatically open the curtains for a view of the mountain/fog: kind of interesting?

There have been better views

Mt. Rainier
Driving to Mt. Rainier did not so much improve the weather. I feel like morale on this trip has decreased a bit due to the weather, or maybe the fact that we've been in each other's immediate presence for at least 23 hours a day every day for the past 9 days. Most likely a combination of the two. But we played some word games during the drive to lighten the mood, and then once we got to Mt. Rainier, my over exuberance was sufficient. It was so amazing! Super green rain foresty pine trees! LOOK AT ALL THE GWEEEEN (Katie Rizzolo, you've ruined the way I react when I see trees).

This isn't as bad as Mt. Saint Helens, but still kind of looks like the inside of a ping pong ball

We actually didn't do all that much in the park since it is really foggy and there was snow everywhere. Nadkarni wanted ice cream at one point, and I decided to make a note of it.
We drove to a cool lookout over a waterfall. The trail down to the lookout was snowy, cold, and icy, but totally worth it. We then ran up a huge snowy hill to ass-sled down. Still fun... but then my shorts were soaking wet after that. WORTH IT.

Ass-sledding: best kind of sledding?

Oh! Then fun news. Scott, who was driving today, just noticed that we were basically out of gas. I feel like more attention should have been paid to that, but hey, NEW ADVENTURE, LET'S DO THIS. We stopped at the visitor center first to hear a ranger talk about the first Summit of Mt. Rainier. Somewhat pleasant? Then we drove all the way out of the park for gas after a short hike over another waterfall.

Is it just me, or does Alex make the greatest faces of all time?

Almost ONE HUNDRED DOLLARS to fill that huge fucking car. Ugh: it gets like 17mpg HIGHWAY. We've driven about 2000 miles on the trip so far. Intense.
After that, we just cooked some dinner over a fire, trying to get rid of most things since we only have one more camping night. Scott, as he tends to do, messed with a perfectly good fire to the point where it went out. Classic (to his defense, we were trying to use the coals to cook, so we had to make sure it was arranged such that our food wouldn't come out super raw). But it was rebuilt and we cooked a successful fucking meal. We're planning on doing a morning hike, so we're heading to bed pretty soon. I sincerely hope the weather is good tomorrow. I've already given up on seeing stars on a clear night for this trip. It sucks that I'm somewhat pessimistic here, but that's just the way things are proceeding. I better see SO MANY TIDEPOOLS at Olympic tomorrow...
Another great thing we've picked up on this trip is that when Scott tells a story that doesn't elicit the reaction he was looking for, he adds "and then I found five dollars!" to add a little ironic "pizazz." Today, Alex added "and then you found TEN THOUSAND DOLLARS!" at the end of one of Scott's stories for the same effect, to simply indicate "cool story bro." It was hilarious. Kudos to Alex, because we've started doing that whenever someone has a "seemingly nonsensical" story.
Just remembered my post about Mt. Saint Helens. I was SO frustrated with the weather. Sure it is really our only real setback for the trip, but that really did suck.