Yes, really. Out of nowhere last week we got four inches of snow in four hours. The forecast was for a little rain. . . maybe. At about 3:00 it suddenly started to snow like crazy. Dave was at work with no car and dependent on public transportation to make the thirteen mile trip home. We thought it would surely let up and I could drive in and pick him up, but it didn't and the insanity of snow in Portland took over. It took him two and a half hours to get from the office to the Expo Center Park 'n' Ride and me two hours to make the six mile drive from home to him. Northbound was a piece of cake and we were home in fifteen minutes. If we don't see another snowflake this winter, it will be fine with us.
From Port Townsend, you can take a ferry to Keystone on the southwest side of Whidbey Island. The skies cleared about Sequim and so the cameras were back out on the ferry. The first picture was like a flash back in time.
There on the bay in Port Townsend was a catamaran exactly like our old one. Same color hull, same color tramp, and same color sails. It brought back some sweet memories.
You can see the Admiralty Head Lighthouse as you come into Keystone. They're still working on it, but it will be one of the largest and most striking in the state of Washington when it's done.
We do our sightseeing first so that we don't have to babysit salmon on ice while vacationing. Our three days in Seiku can be described in one word--RAINY. Other than that it was great. The water was so flat that you could have water skiied on the strait. We went out fishing in the rain anyway, but only long enough to get a couple of pink salmon. We grilled one in August and it was one of the best salmon I've ever had. Unfortunately it was too wet and rainy to have cameras out for pictures.
After the 90 minute crossing we arrived in the Victoria inner harbor to the city’s signature Empress Hotel
and the Parliament Building.
We took a tour bus to the outskirts of the city and the Butchart Gardens. Millions of flowers and only two hours in the garden severely limited Linda’s attempt to get up close and personal with every flower.
While Linda took pictures of flowers, I took a walk to the famous sunken garden that was originally a lime quarry.
We returned to the city for lunch and toured the inner harbor in a water taxi.
While on the taxi, we shared the harbor with the numerous float planes that make use of the harbor airport.
As the day ended, we again boarded the Coho Ferry to return to Port Angeles. As we left the harbor, the sun came out and shone on the Empress Hotel as if to bid us farewell and invite us to return.
We took our lawn chairs to the park behind the hotel to watch fireworks. Sadly, it was the not the big fireworks display we’ve enjoyed in Vancouver in past years, but tough economic times brought that to a close this year. I think this was the peninsula version of it though. Live music and a beautiful sunset made for an enjoyable night.
on the bridge,
and sitting right down by the water.
It was the first year we’ve spent the 4th somewhere other than in the marina on our sailboat for several years. We kind of missed it, but it’s also nice to try something new.
and white. 
Combine with one meadow and snowcapped mountaintops and I think you get breathtaking.
There were little white tail deer wandering all around the meadows
and coming right up by the parking lots.
While we were up there, fog began to roll in over the Strait of Juan de Fuca, but if you zoom in and look closely, you can see some outlines of the San Juan Islands from this view north from Hurricane Ridge.
I need to pack up and check out, but I’ll try to add the evening part of this post in the next 24 hours.
I seem to also have a weakness for clock towers, especially against a clear blue sky.
But what is a Victorian building without a ghostly legend? This is Manresa Castle.
Today it's a hotel, but according to the History Channel feature called Haunted Northwest, the place is haunted. Believe what you will, but it probably makes for a good campfire story.
These long road trips are so hard to post. It takes forever to sort through hundreds and sometimes thousands of pictures and then we come home, do laundry, repack, and go take more. I've about decided that instead of trying to post an entire day, I'm just going to post one location at a time. Sometimes that may be just one picture, just so you know we haven't fallen off the face of the earth (photographing lighthouses).
After we checked into the hotel and had dinner we decided to go back out and try for some sunset, or golden hour, shots. There are hundreds to sort through, but this is a favorite.
For the sake of posting, we'll just have to go out of order for a bit. On the way to Port Angeles, we stopped in Sequim (pronounced Squim) and visited some of the lavendar fields.
It was a week before lavendar festival and so everything wasn't in full bloom yet, but our favorite was the Purple Haze Lavendar Farm on Bell Bottom Road. We were there early in the morning and they invited us to go ahead and walk through the fields.
I wish I could add a smell widget to the blog. The aroma was spa-like and relaxing.
As soon as we had that thought, we ran into a problem. The next lighthouse was at Skunk Bay. Yes, you read that right. I don't know why they call it that. It smelled fine to us, but the Skunk Bay Lighthouse is privately owned and operated. It looked like we were going to get skunked in our search. We thought it would be one that you would just have to photograph from a distance, but just as we were giving up and heading to the next lighthouse, you could see it sitting at the end of a path through the trees. Shadows and my aversion to trespassing compromise the quality of this shot, but here it is.
The third lighthouse was potentially even more disappointing. Marrowstone Lighthouse is located at the northern tip of Marrowstone Island. It is government owned and closed to public. The beach around it is open to the public, bit when you walk to the back you find what we refer to as just a block of cement. If it weren't for the grouping of buildings behind it, it would been VERY disappointing,but I think the red rooftops constitute a near save.
Maybe not--maybe you just remove the block of cement and take a picture of vintage victorian home on the beach.
We're out on our second annual trip to the Olympic Peninsula. We're planning a slow trip this year with lots of little sidetrips along the way. So far, WiFi connections have been non-existent and this one is very slow. I'll try to post daily if I can. Sometimes it may be just something on the sidebar or one picture "in the middle." I thought technology might decrease as we traveled west, but it's actually getting better. We left Thursday after Dave got off work and drove to Port Orchard for the night. We got into Port Orchard about sundown and the sunset over the bay and the Olympics was quite nice. This shot was from the parking lot of our hotel.
I surprised Dave with a trip to Seattle for Father’s Day. We did things a little differently than we normally do. It seems like we do the same routine everytime. We stay in the same hotel in Bellvue, go to Pikes Place Market during the day, and a Mariner’s game at night. It’s a fun trip, but for Father’s Day, we did things a little differently. We drove up to Bremerton on Friday afternoon and stayed at the Hampton by the ferry dock. We usually go to Bremerton and ride the ferry (or car boat as Rylie says) to Seattle and stay there. It was an interesting ride over because we had two armed Coast Guard zodiacs escorting our ferry all the way to Seattle. We wondered if maybe the security level was elevated, but no, they were just out for a ride.
This time we walked on the ferry, walked around the pier, had dinner, and road back. It had poured rain on us on the way up and was still quite cloudy by evening, but surprisingly not incredibly windy or cold.
Saturday turned out to be a gorgeous day and very spontaneous. We talked about doing several different things on the drive Friday, but it turned into a lighthouse hunt. We have been looking for the West Point Lighthouse in Seattle for at least a year and finally found it--with the help of a GPS. (I think we’d still be looking without it.) The most wonderful thing about it is that’s it’s just above the beach and the tide was out so there were no cliffs to teeter on to take pictures from the back. The clouds and sun even cooperated.
We stopped in a marine store along the way and a guy helped Dave find a book he’s been looking for for years at a marine bookstore in Ballard. We were close to Ballard and so it would just be a quick detour to pick up this book—just a few minutes out of way. NOT!!! We were there for the summer solstice and all of Ballard was in pagan celebration mode. We won’t go into the details of it, but let’s just say lots of streets were closed off which nullifies any advantage you get from having a GPS and the blank space below is the only picture blogspot would allow me to post. 
We went by in April and there was construction all around, but when we stopped, not only was there no construction, it was open for tours.
After that, a quick drive around the point took us to the ferry dock at Fauntleroy. We rode over to Vashon Island and drove down for one last lighthouse. We had no idea that Point Robinson was on Vashon Island.
There were lots of clouds coming and going to and from Seattle, but not one raindrop until we got south of Olympia on the way home. Saturday turned out to be a beautiful day for a Father’s Day getaway.
