Pacific Northwest Vacation

We flew to Seattle, WA on June 18th and traveled to various places in the Pacific NW for the week, flying back home on the 25th.  We had a great vacation, though I think we're still recovering our energy.  We traveled to a different city nearly every day, so you can imagine we did a lot of unpacking and repacking.  Isaiah did really well on the airplane and enjoyed seeing lots of people and animals.  It's easier to tell the story in pictures, so here we go...

SEATTLE

Pike Place Market

Most of these bouquets in the market were only $10!!  So beautiful and fresh.



We couldn't have survived this vacation without Isaiah's sturdy stroller.  We walked nearly everywhere we went.  When he got bored in the hotel room, he'd walk over to his stroller letting us know he was ready to get going again.



Hotel Living



We used Isaiah's Happi Nappi from daycare for his makeshift bed for the week.  He fought sleep most nights since we were in the same room and all he had to do was raise his head to find us.



Seattle Center and Waterfront

View from the Space Needle

City View from the Space Needle.  Seattle was overcast like this much of the time we were there, though it didn't actually rain much.  I desperately wanted to be able to see Mt. Rainier from the city, but the cloud cover was too thick to allow it.

Waterfront overlooking Elliott Bay of the Puget Sound

FRIDAY HARBOR OF SAN JUAN ISLAND, WA



On the ferry from Anacortes to Friday Harbor.  The ferries operated very efficiently and made our traveling easy.  Isaiah enjoyed running around the deck and making his mother nervous.

 

Ferry Deck

 

Lime Kiln Point State Park, San Juan Island

 

VICTORIA, BRITISH COLUMBIA

The Empress Hotel.  We didn't actually stay there, but it's a beautiful, historic building that overlooks the harbor.  There's a group of 20-25 people riding on a huge multi-person bicycle in this shot.  I'm not sure what they were promoting, but they circled the city multiple times while we were there and were always a site to see.

Having some fun in the lawn in front of the Parliament Building.

The next several pictures are from our visit to Butchart Gardens just outside Victoria.  It's an amazing place well worth the visit.  The climate there allows them to bloom various flowers at the same time that would bloom in different seasons from each other here.

MT. RAINIER NATIONAL PARK, WASHINGTON

This was our lucky glimpse at "the Mountain" as they call it.  Glaciers surround Mt. Rainier, so when warm air hits the surface, it cools and condenses so that the mountain is surrounded by clouds most of the time.  Our second day there, the mountain was completely concealed by cloud cover, so this was the only time we actually saw the peak.

The view from our window at Paradise Inn in the park. 

On our hike to the Grove of the Patriarchs. 

This "mail bear" was in the lobby of the inn, and Isaiah absolutely loved it.  He constantly pointed and talked about the bear.

This is right outside the inn.  That's a huge wall of snow in front of us.  They had higher snowfall than average this year with colder termperatures, so the snow has not melted as quickly as usual.  The direction we're heading is a trailhead, which as you can tell, is totally covered by snow and impassable.  If we could have looked straight up from that point without being in a cloud ourselves, we would have seen the peak of the mountain.

On the "Trail of Shadows".  Wherever the stroller couldn't go, we strapped Isaiah into this carrier.  He did pretty well and it gave us more flexibility.

We spotted several deer, a couples of foxes, an elk, and a ptarmigan (you'll have to look that up) while in the park.  This deer was right outside the visitor's center eating his breakfast and ignoring all of the gawking humans.