Our big trip to the PNW
DH & I just returned from a trip we had planned to take a couple of years ago, but family matters prevented us from taking it until now*. Which is just as well, we celebrated our 25th anniversary while on this trip!
*I'm such a pessimist, I didn't want to mention this trip ahead of time for fear that something would go wrong and we'd need to cancel this trip yet again -- we had to cancel it three times over the last couple of years on account of the family matter. In this case, fourth try was the charm!
We first drove from the SF Bay area, overnighted in Ashland OR, and then continued on to the Olympic Penninsula in WA state. We stayed there for a few days, biking the Olympic Discovery Trail (we brought our bikes with us).
Then we took the car ferry from Port Angeles to Victoria BC and stayed for a week in Sidney, which is about 20 miles north of Victoria. We biked a lot on the excellent Lochside & Galloping Goose Trails, bopping around the Saanich Penninsula and into Victoria. We spent a good part of a day at Butchart Gardens, one of our favoritest places, and the nearby Butterfly Garden.
After that, we took a ferry from Sidney BC to Friday Harbor on San Juan Island in WA state, and then took another ferry to Lopez Island which also in the San Juan Islands chain. There we stayed in a lovely vacation rental house for another week. We biked around Lopez Island a lot, did some hiking, and hung out on the deck of our house and enjoyed the gorgeous views. We also walked onto the interisland ferry to Friday Harbor, and took a shuttle bus around San Juan island which took us to Roche Harbor and Lime Kiln park the first day (where we just missed seeing a pod of orcas swimming by the shore, oh well). We couldn't fit in all the places we wanted to see in one day, so we went back another day and spent a good chunk of time at English Camp, which used to be a British military outpost back when the US and Britain were both laying claim to the San Juan islands (spoiler alert: the US got them). It's now a national park, a lovely place to wander around. We spent some time chatting with the volunteer docents, a very nice early-retired couple from Colorado. They spend about seven months out of the year volunteering at various national parks, living out of their RV and seeing the country, which seems like a pretty great way to live!
After our excellent week in the San Juan islands, we took the ferry eastbound to Anacortes WA, overnighted in Seattle and met up with friends, and then took the scenic route back home along the Pacific Coast highway, with stopovers in Seaside OR, Bandon OR, and Fortuna CA (the latter so that we could meander along the Avenue of the Giants and enjoy the redwoods in Humboldt Redwoods State Park).
Remarkably, we ran into significant rainfall only once during the entire 3 weeks in the PNW, and that's when we spent the one night in Seattle enroute to the OR coast on our way home. The rest of the time, the weather was fabulous, and everything went without a hitch. A grand time was had.
