Goodbye, Washington!

This afternoon we are heading on to Oregon, but we have truly enjoyed our time in Washington. We stayed at the Mt. St. Helens RV Resort, which is a great little campground on a hill over looking Silver Lake with a terrific view of it’s namesake, Mt. St. Helens.  Yesterday we had lunch and went for a short hike in Seaquest State Park. It is a lovely place full of evergreens, moss, and ferns.

Later in the afternoon, Nick took the boys out for another hike in the Gifford Pinchot National Park.

Goodbye, Washington! It’s been lovely!

Mount St. Helens and Silver Lake

We have had a wonderful time in Washington! The scenery is amazing and the weather is beautiful.  We have been busy making the most of our time here.

On Monday we headed up to the Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument in the Gifford Pinchot National Forest. 

At the Mount St. Helens National Monument

Mount St. Helens

What is left of the trees that were in the blast zone when the volcano erupted in 1980.

Taking in the amazing view

My favorite mode of transportation 😉

Looking at these trees was like looking at an optical illusion.

On our way home we stopped at this cute little restaurant with a deck overlooking the Toutle River.  The food was great and the scenery was lovely.

Tuesday we went kayaking in Silver Lake. We had so much fun! Our family has done a lot of canoeing together over the years, but this was the first time we went out kayaking together. The setting for the lake could not have been more picturesque. The view of Mount St. Helens was amazing!

One of our neighbors here at the rv park gave us some firewood. We had our first s’mores of the trip!  Eating toasted marshmallows and looking out over the lake was a great way to end a great day!

Two of those days

Do you know those kinds of days when nothing – absolutely nothing – goes as planned? Yeah, that kind of day. We have had two of them in a row.

Montana was lovely, but we were all ready to move on to new (as in warmer, dryer) places. We headed out Saturday morning toward Idaho. The idea was to camp near the small town of Kingston, canoe down the Coeur d’Alene river, and celebrate my son’s birthday.  We arrived as planned. The area was beautiful. Really beautiful. We crossed a narrow one-lane bridge to get to the rv park where we had planned to camp, only to discover the office was closed. There was no where to turn around so we, with our very long travel trailer, just kept driving down this crazy country road. We were relieved to find a second rv park a ways down. But alas, it apparently was a party place and actually had its own bar with a large bon fire planned for that night. That wasn’t the quiet evening we had envisioned, so we kept moving down the road. We ended up all the way over in Coeur d’Alene. By the time we got there it was too late to canoe. So, we decided to just go to dinner to celebrate Caleb’s birthday. After two failed attempts at other restaurants, we ended up at Denny’s. By this point, it was just comical. Thankfully, we were all able to laugh at the continuous mishaps and, in the end, Caleb had a great day in spite of the craziness!

Happy 19th birthday, Caleb!

The beautiful Coeur d’Alene Lake

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Having fun at the Wolf Lodge Campground

 

Umm… karate kid? lol

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Today was rough. We were all tired. Nerves were a bit frayed.We had lost our sense of humor. Our 4 hour drive to the Mt. Rainier area turned into a 9 hour drive. We ended up slightly past the Mount St. Helens area. One thing after another went wrong. By the time we finally got parked at a campground, our rear bumper was coming off (enough said). We decided to go out to a local pizza place to relax a bit after such a stressful day… yeah, the restaurant ended up being a mom and pop version of Chuck E. Cheese. Seriously?! LOL! At that point we had to laugh. We’re all hoping tomorrow is a better day!

eastern Washington

Overlooking the Columbia River and the Ginkgo Petrified Forest State Park

At the Wild Horses Overlook

Beautiful!

Miles of windmills

Mt. Rainier