{ Day 11 The Oregon Coast }

We decided to break up day two of the long drive home by going down the Oregon coast. We started at Tillamook Cheese factory. The kids loved watching the cheese being cut and packaged. there were so many conveyor belts going everywhere. It looked like a movie. It reminded me of I Love Lucy in the candy factory.

We stopped for lunch at Mo's which is a popular place to eat. We weren't really that impressed. The service was terrible and the food was average. It was cheap, though. The chowder was too potatoey and not creamy enough. We headed on down the coast to the Sea Lion Caves in Florence. This was very interesting. Hundreds of sea lions hang out in the huge cave.

We took the elevator down 200 feet into the cave to see them.

There was also a lookout point where we could see hundreds of sea lions on the rocky shore.

{ Day 10 The Long Drive Home }

Monday we started the long three day drive back home. We woke up in Alberta, ate breakfast, loaded up and headed south. We had lunch at this pretty little lake in BC. We crossed the border into the US, a one hour wait at customs, right next to the smelliest cattle trucks ever, ugh. We had ice cream in Idaho, drove through Washington, stopped in Oregon for dinner and found a hotel room in Hood River, Oregon at 10:30 p.m. We were so exhausted, we fell right asleep.

{ Day 9 Banff National Park }

On Sunday, we spent the day in Banff National Park which is in Alberta, Canada. It's just beautiful. We went for a short hike through the woods and then stopped at Castle Mountain for a bit.

We ate lunch at the Station which is an old train station that was refurbished into a restaurant. We had delicious bison burgers. I tried Quebec style Poutine, french fries and cheese curd smothered in gravy. Yummy!!! We had to eat in the main restaurant, the dining cars are only open for dinner on Friday and Saturday nights. Next time, I'll make a reservation.

We tried to stop by lake louise, but the traffic was crazy and there were no parking spots. We ended up driving up toward Jasper and stopped at Bow Lake. There's a trail to the falls, runoff from the bow glacier that forms this lake. We hiked this trail and only saw a couple of people the entire time.

We had a picnic dinner, then stopped for some ice cream to celebrate my birthday. I had my last maple and walnut ice cream until the next time we go up north again. Sigh.

{ Day 8 Glacier and Jasper Nat'l Parks }

Glacier National Park in BC was so amazingly beautiful. We stayed at the historic lodge there. It was wonderful, even though the internet connnection was useless. We went on a couple of hikes. The first one to view the glaciers and the remnants of the old train tracks that ran through here. Apparently, the national park was discovered while trying to find a route for the train, so it's all about the trains here. The information center was in a replica storage building with a grass roof.

Our second hike was to the Bear Creek Falls. So beautiful. The kids loved to play by the stream for a long time before we hit the road to Jasper National Park.

We made it just in time for the 6:00 bus to the glacier. Their website said that was the last one, however they did do two more after us. It was so exciting to ride in the giant 6-wheel drive snow bus up to the glacier. It was about 2 degrees celcius when we were up there.

{ Day 7 Ferry to Vancouver }

We got up early and made the 9:00 ferry to Vancouver. This ferry was only about half full, so we had no problems at all. It was so pretty, going through the Islands. Here's the view as we were pulling away.

A nice man who was probably bored to tears on the 1 1/2 hour cruise volunteered to take our picture.

The kids got to pick a toy from the gift shop. My Daughter picked a small stuffed seal. Too bad we didn't see the real thing from the ferry today. My son picked a toy replica of the ferry we were riding.

We got off the ferry, found a Safeway in Delta, and took our loot to the pretty Boundary Waters State Park for a picnic on the beach. We spent the rest of the day driving to Glacier National Park.

{ Day 6 Vancouver Island }

On Thursday, we took a drive down highway 4. The island is just so beautiful, I love it every time we go there. We stopped at the funniest little shopping area where the roof of the store is made of grass, and, no joke, goats graze on the roof. Papa saw them, but we missed them. We were too busy shopping through the really neat toys they had. The kids picked out some puppets. Then we took a couple of nice hikes.

This is the biggest tree in this particular forest. Pretty impressive.

A perfect example of those trees that look like they're fixing to walk away.

{ Day 5 Olympic National Park, Elwah River }

On Wednesday, we headed to the Elwah River for adventure! It's becoming a habit with us going on rafting trips in National Parks. Look out Grand Canyon! Anyway, here we are before our class 2 whitewater rafting trip. This is one above no rapids at all, or class 1.


Here we all are after my harrowing experience of unintentionally swimming in the river. That's right, I was a "swimmer." In other words, I fell out of the boat. I didn't know what happened. I thought my paddle was caught and pulled me in as soon as I put it in the water to row. Everyone else said we hit an eddy which bumped up the other side of the boat and pitched me out. They said it was the most graceful fall they'd ever seen. They suspected me of diving out on purpose. As if I would ever intentionally put my entire body in freezing glacier water just for the fun of it. The good news was, I caught the rope that goes around the raft and was pulled back in almost right away. I wasn't hurt, or even scared, although my son was really worried after that. I saved the paddle, too!

My daughter really liked our guide Anna. Anna pronounced her to become a river guide when she grows up. She could see that girl's spirit of adventure!

Waiting for Dad to get changed out of wet clothes. Did I mention he was the only one who didn't rent a wet suit for this trip? I was so happy I had a wet suit after being submerged in the river.

Afterwards, we dashed to the ferry in Port Angeles. We got there five minutes before boarding of the 12:45 and were put on standby. The next ferry left at 5:15. We were so lucky, we squeaked on and didn't have to pass the afternoon in Port Angeles!

{ Day 4 Olympic National Park }

We started out today at the Salt Creek State Park tide pools. The ranger in Olympic recommended it for low tide around 9:00 am. It was perfect! We found a seastar, anemones, hermit crabs and crab shells. Mussels and barnicles were attatched to everything it seemed.

Then we headed on over to the Hoh Rain Forest. So pretty. All the plants had personalities. The roots of some trees were so exposed, it looked like they were ballerina trees up on their tippy toes, or they were getting ready to pull up roots and walk on out of there. Moss was draped over everything. Ferns grew everywhere, even on some trees. This temperate rain forest gets an average of 140 inches of rain per year compared with 30 inches for Seattle. More individual species are found in this rain forest than the tropical rain forests around the world.

We ended the day at the beach in La Push on the Quillette Indian reservation. It was beautiful, but no tide pools at second beach as promised by the brochures. We were there at the higher low tide period, so that may be why, who knows? This beach was made famous by the Twilight books and movies, so it was especially popular with the teenagers.

We had to climb over hundreds of these washed up driftwood logs just to get to the beach. It was hard work!

{ Day 3 Olympic National Park Washington }

Today, we arrived at Olympic National Park. We started the day by hiking Hurricane Ridge to the subalpine prairie at the top of the ridge. It was so beautiful with so many colorful wildflowers popping up all around. The scent of purple wildflowers was light and beautiful where there were large stands.

We were so high up we were walking in the clouds. At first, this really bothered my son, but at the end of the day he decided it was his favorite part of the day.

The marmots were just coming out of hibernation and were so playful running through the meadows and digging. The gray jays are the camp theives of the area. During lunch, one flew down to our table and took my son's cookie from right in front of him. Three brazen little birds were watching us the entire time for a chance to take our food. A tiny chipmunk also joined in the food begging shenanigans but came away empty handed.

The black tailed deer were'nt at all nervous around people. We followed this one from the trail and watched her eating up these delicate avalanche lilies.

After dinner at Lake Crescent Lodge, we hiked to Marymere falls. So pretty. We were lucky the sun is up until about 9:30 p.m. so we could still see the trail.

The fields of daisies were so pretty near crescent lake that we had to get a picture. We learned later that the daisies are actually noxious weeds, introductions that crowd out the native flora. If I had known that, I would have picked myself a giant bouquet to take back to the room!

{ Day 2 Oregon and Washington }

Today, we started off in southern Oregon and headed to the state capital in Salem. The Oregon State Capital had a walk of the flags with every state represented. There was also a replica of the liberty bell and these cute beaver statues. It reminded the kids of talking beavers in Narnia.

Then we moved on to the Bonneville Dam and Fish Hatchery on the Columbia River Gorge.

Here's the visitor center at the dam:

The fish ladder was installed to help the salmon and other fish to go upstream through the dam to their traditional mating grounds:

Watching salmon go up the fish ladder from the viewing window inside:

At the hatchery, many different types of salmon and sturgeon are bred. Here's Herman the sturgeon's pond complete with rainbow trout on the left:

The kids fed the rainbow trout and my son kept putting his finger in the pond. When he was "hand feeding" the trout he got bit on the finger. He went between feeling hurt to excited that he was bit.

Then we headed up to Olympia where we visited the Washington State Capital and ate dinner at The Oyster House. The food was ok, just a bit cold due to a slow waitress.

We drove two hours more to Sequim so we could be closer to the park in the morning.