Hello everyone

I hope you find time to take a look at the pictures at least, look for those links to the photo albums too! :0) If you take the time to actually read the blogs, please excuse the millions of typos. You can get to the rest of the entries by going to "archives" on the right of the screen and clicking on the month you would like to see. Have fun.

By the way, I learned that posting a comment is more of a process than I thought it would be, I guess you have to set up an account. Well, it is free to set one up and oh-so-fun to create a blog and add pictures of your adventures! So maybe some of you will want to anyway!!

Hope everyone is well.

we collected these magnets on our travels and stuck them on Miles (the car) - 22 states in 55 days!

12,079 miles!!

End mileage. We did 12,079 miles!!! Yahoo!

Olympic National Park

We decided to go to Olympic as our truely last hurrah. So we went to Dosewallips, but it was closed. We ended up camping at Fallsview campground, and had an interesting night. There were some younger folks drinking, heavily, and we spent the majority of the night listening to their swearing and yelling. Yuck. But aside from that - it was nice to be at least Near Olympic National Park. The next day we decided to go to Staricase and went for a little 2 mile hike, crossing the crystal clear water of the river. Drove home in about 2 and a half hours (about the same ifyou take the ferry I think, only $20 cheaper!)

Mt. Rainier National Park

Not a could in the sky today! We are so glad we decided to stay one more day. The mountain really is amazing! We basically did the same drive we did yesterday, only this time we actually SAW the mountain in all those "view" points.


Mt. Rainier

We didn't have the energy to do any hiking today, though, so we just did a nice drive and headed to our next destination... HOME!

As we got closer and closer to Seattle, we both felt excited and sad at the same time. Glad to be done, as this has truely been exhausting, but sad to be done, as this has been truely exhilerating!

We both said the same thing when we saw the city, "Has Seattle gotten bigger in the last twon months?" Suddenly Seattle seems huge to us. We just spend two months traveling on side roads in small towns throughout the country. We only hit cities and traffic here and there. Am I ready for the hustle and bustle again?

We got home only about 2 and a half hours after leaving Rainier and engaged in a much-too-long search for the house key while our kitties meowed in the window. It was awesome, once we got in they greated at the door us like we hoped, and sniffed us all over for about 10 minutes. Oh how we missed our guys!

After hanging out with the boys, I just couldn't take it and had to clean up and unwrap all the souvenirs. It is great fun opening up stuff from a month or two ago! I have 30 new shotglasses!!

And now we are home, and fighting off reality for as long as we can. What an amazing two months... thanks for coming along the journey with us through this blog.

Hope you enjoyed our stories and pictures.

Click here for more pictures of Mt. Rainier National Park:

http://www.kodakgallery.com/Slideshow.jsp?mode=fromshare&Uc=9gc0q893.4sqckssr&Uy=2u84zq&Ux=1

Mount Rainier National Park (Happy Birthday Grandpa)

FOGGY morning in Mount Rainier National Park. We spent the morning driving ever so slowly through the park, unable to see 10 feet in front of ourselves and thought we would just head home today. We had lunch and decided to go on the "Trail of the Shadows" walk through an old growth forest, some meadows, and natural springs. Aparently Longmire had found these springs and turned into "Medicine Springs". Now there are signs everywhere -"Do not drink water. Could make you very sick!".

Well, once we got in the forest, we knew we couldn't leave today. It is awesome there. It smells so good, too. So, we decided to camp overnight and hoped that there would be Some clearing.

As the afternoon progressed we started to see our surroundings a bit more, though things were still in a thick fog. We debated on where to camp and ended up going to White River CG, hoping for the clouds to burn away (we even created on our little sun cheer, telling it to burn off those clouds :) ). Well, it worked, because by the time we got to sunrise point, 5:30 PM!,we could see the mountain!!! Hooray! It is awesome. It is HUGE. It is white and gray, just like the kitty we named after it. :) We went for a short walk and got some pics. (It was super cold!!)

Happy, we went to get a campsite and spent the night in the FREEZING 4000 foot high campground. We did have a nice fire, however, and I got to use my Gila marshmallow stick one last time. We tried not to think too much of the fact this would be our last night of our trip.

No more Big Fork (Happy Birthday Adam!)

We left Big Fork today, sadly. After going to Corner Kitchen for some greasy breakfast with the Tranels, we said our goodbyes. We left the wonderful state of Montana and entered our own again, Washington. We were pretty excited to be in Washington again!! What an achievment! We drove almost all the way to Mount Rainier National Park, but stopped jsut short due to need for dinner. We camped at Willow Creek campground by the river. We talked a lot today about what we have learned rom this trip and how we want things to be different. We are excited to simply spend more time in the outdoors! We created a long list of things we hope to do and to learn more about. This trip has given me insight into so many things and I am excited to continue my learning. :)

And even more Big Fork!

Today was yet another relaxing day at the Ranch. We slept in and then went to float on the Swan River with Hannah, Micah and Peter. This river was much higher than the Yampa in Steamboat Springs. Bryan was in the back steering this time, while I got to sit in the front with my feet in the water. There were some rapids that tossed me back into the boat. It was awesome. Then I got to hang out at the ranch and read, look at scrapbooks, eat leftovers. Ahhh. Later that night we watched "Guess Who". Not a bad day if you ask me :)

For some pictures of the house, the view, the people, etc. click here:

http://www.kodakgallery.com/Slideshow.jsp?mode=fromshare&Uc=9gc0q893.8pdcjymz&Uy=bfydaj&Ux=1