Life is a Highway - Duchette style - Take 2!

Before coming, I told Ella about the Twilight book series (which I loved) and that we’d be visiting Forks, WA which is the setting of the books. Well, she found the movies on Netflix and finished them all before we left. Today the Twilight movies leave Netflix so she was excited to have finished them and thought it was ironic that we get to visit Forks today on their last day on Netflix. We first visited Ruby Beach. After walking down to the beach, you have to climb over enormous driftwood/trees, and then the beach is full of round, flat stones. It was very foggy but beautiful and a great place to touch the Pacific Ocean again! We had lunch and headed into the Hoh Rainforest section of Olympic National Park. A black bear ran out in front of us as we were entering. Unfortunately we couldn’t get all the way to the visitor center because the line was a 2 hour wait and we needed gas. *Note to self to really gas up before going all the way into the rainforest!* The best radio station in the...

We got up really early this morning because we had some traveling to do and the Mt. Rainier National Park visitor centers close earlier than most. We drove through the Columbia River Gorge area along the border of Oregon and Washington. We saw Mt. Hood in the distance. Then we had lunch at the Mount St. Helens visitor center. We dropped off our camper at the campground and went into Mt. Rainier National Park. It should have only taken us about a half an hour to get to the Longmire Museum, but the traffic to get into the park was crazy! We made it just in time to get stamps and head to the main visitor center. We got there just in time before they closed as well. Then we enjoyed the views of Mt. Rainier. It’s massive and beautiful! There’s still snow all over the place at the visitor center so the kids had a mini snowball fight and we jumped around melting snow puddles. It’s a beautiful place and so massive! On our way out we saw a deer. It was a day of mountains!

We left Montana today and drove through Idaho. We stopped at Craters of the Moon National Preserve on the way through. It’s so fascinating how our Earth has changed over millions of years. This area has changed a lot but had 7 active volcanoes that haven’t erupted for thousands of years but what remains is the black ash and rock. You’ll see all black around you and then bright green in the distance. This was a quick stop and then we drove on to Oregon where we’ll stay the night before heading to Washington tomorrow. We are now on Pacific time (3 hours difference from the East coast). Since we gained another hour, and it was time, we also took the car in for an oil change right by the campground. I finished my latest book and tried to drop it off here but there’s no place so hopefully I’ll find another Oregon book drop before we hit Washington!