Darek + Stacie

We did a lot of cool things when we were up in Washington, but this was, without a doubt, my favorite of the trip. We made a small hike up to Sol Duc Falls in the Olympic National Park at the end of the day when the light was just perfect. The photos hardly do it justice. It was a beautiful, peaceful place.

The sign at the beginning of the trail (there’s a point before that 8, before you get too impressed):

I couldn’t get it in the picture, but this rainbow went all the way across to the other side:

Crispy has no legs:

Kathleen jumps across the raging waters:

Here we be:

We drove up the mountains to Hurricane Ridge for some mountain-viewing and hiking. It’s one of those places that is gorgeous but the middle-of-the-day photos just can’t do it justice.

Doesn’t this just make you want to start spinning around singing “The HILLS are ALIIIIVE…!”

You have to use a wrestling announcing voice: “Trees versus flowers, the final show-down!”

The wildlife was friendly:

Maybe a little too friendly:

Snow in August! Hooray!

There’s Canada in the background – and snow in the foreground:

Ski lift:

We took a road trip from Seattle to the unbelievably gorgeous Olympic Peninsula. I have a lot more pictures of specific places, but these are those ones that are more from the road trip part.

Crispy took this one as we crossed the bridge:

This was just randomly on the side of the road. Of course we had to stop and take pictures:

My bestest friends, Crispy and Kathleen:

Sometimes you just can’t trust your GPS app. This is, literally, the end of the road:

They’re so nice. Waiting patiently for me to finish taking pictures:

We stayed overnight in a hotel and the next morning were very excited to see Elk grazing outside our window:

Well, they were across the highway, but still – pretty cool:

Hahahaha. We went through Forks, where the Twilight books take place, and thought this sign was really funny:

I LOVE FISH N CHIPS. Especially when I’m near the ocean.

We stopped by a winery to sample the local wine (mmmm…wine…)

I love drinking wine with an amazing view in unbelievably gorgeous weather:

Mountains everywhere! (This was actually taken from the beach. How often do you go to a beach with a snow-capped mountain in the distance??)

Random mountain flower:

This picture doesn’t really do this justice – as we were driving we saw the clouds settled in the valley of the mountains and it looked really cool, so we stopped to take pictures:

In case you were wondering how cool I am:

I was going to do a whole series of poses/faces but a car drove by and I couldn’t stop laughing. Ah. I’m so cool.

I was torn between posting the pictures from my Seattle/Washington trip and the pictures from my New England/Fall trip. In the end Seattle won, partly because it happened first, but mostly because I forgot I already did the majority of the editing a couple of months ago. I’m going to post them somewhat out of order, and possibly backwards. I haven’t totally decided yet.

Here is one of my favorite views of Seattle:

And here are a few from further down Alki Beach, a little bit earlier:

I’m going to do my best to get them all up before the end of the year so I can move on to New England photos.