My birthday!

So it took me awhile to write about our weekend on the Olympic Peninsula. I now have this last weekend to write about as well so this will probably turn out to be 3 blogs in a row. But, better late than never. Thanks for all of the birthday blogs and phone calls by the way.

Thursday afternoon (the 14th) we took off and took the ferry to the peninsula and then drove about 3 hours to Sol Duc hot springs. It was kind of drizzling so we set up camp and ate and got in our tent. Jak couldn't believe his luck. He got to sleep with us and hang out until we all went to sleep. We took our 3 man tent so we were all cuddled up together with our zip together sleeping bags and quilts. It was very warm and cozy. Jak slept on the side next to me and was perfectly easy to sleep with. He woke up a little groggy, but quite excited still. The next morning was cold, but beautiful. It stayed that way the rest of the day. Happy birthday! Danny made me a breakfast of pancakes, sausage, scrambled eggs and juice while I relaxed in the tent reading my book. He would have let me eat my breakfast in bed, but I was quite insistant on keeping food away from the tent because of the bears. I'm a little paranoid of bears--especially when the sign at the entrance of the campsite says that bears have recently been seen in the area. Anyway, it was an excellent breakfast.

We then left our tent to hold our beautiful campsite and we went on a long drive to the rainforest. It was beautiful, but honestly a little anticlimatic because our campsite is in the same kind of climate and was even more green, we thought. But, there were some stunning short hikes and we had fun. Although, Jak is becoming a very stubborn hiker. You can see him in the pictures often going the opposite direction as we are going. He made a real point of that. He also preferred running when we were stopping and stopping when we were moving. Where, normally a hike advertised as 1 hour will take us 30-45 min., this one took us well over 1 1/2 hours. Danny and I had some good discussions about the independence of children. It is quite complicated, even this young. I mean, if he wants to sit on a stair and look around at the beauty, who are we to stop him? We wouldn't force a friend to leave, we'd give them their space. But, then, what if he is there forever? Or what if he is clearly trying to defy you, sitting, because you aren't? Hmmm. Very tricky. All of the senior citizen hikers that passed us thought he was very charming.

After the hike and a picnic we drove to Rialto Beach. It was also beautiful. A very rocky beach with big waves and logs rolled up everywhere. This coastline is also famous for the large rock formations in the water just off of the coast. They just up and leave beautiful silhouettes for miles. You can kind of see them in the pictures--but none of the pictures of the beach give it justice. This was our first view of the actual wide open Pacific Ocean here in Washington. Jak has been experimenting with a new emotion: fear. Sometimes he gets it right and sometimes he uses this emotion at times where we know he is not afraid. But, he was using it quite frequently and probably legitimately here with the waves. His scared face involves making his lips into a tight circle and putting his hand up to his mouth while sharply drawing in a breath and tensing his whole body so it all kind of quivers. It is very cute, especially when used appropriately (big waves, big cars, a loud noise etc.). It is kind of cute to watch him experiment and try to sort out all of his new emotions. We take for granted how easily and naturally we pull out (or mask) our reactions from our wide selection of emotions.

After the beach we went back to Sol Duc Danny made me a birthday dinner of mashed potatoes and Fettucini Alfredo with Broccoli. We then put on our swimsuits and soaked in the hot springs for a couple of hours. They were actually really nice and well taken care of. We had to pay, but it was all outdoor and they had showers and towels etc. They had a wading pool that Jak loved and several other pools ranging from 97-105 degrees. All natural. Then we went home and ate cheesecake for dessert (a great addition to the backpacking food--you can buy no bake cheesecake mixes--just add water and butter. Mmmm). Not a bad birthday, eh?

The next day we hiked to Sol Duc waterfall which was also beautiful, of course. Then we drove home. We figure we drove at least 10 hours in this 3 day trip. But, we didn't see any bears (yay) and we didn't have access to the internet so it was a very relaxing and successful trip and a perfect birthday. Make sure you check out the pictures if you haven't yet.

http://web.mac.com/thecurrits/iWeb/Site/Olympic%20Peninsula.html