Port Angeles, Washington

 This AirBnB is pretty cool.  The owners texted me last night and said that they'd bring up a continental breakfast and leave it at our door.....it was fantastic!  Warm fresh muffins and lots of other fresh goodies!

 

 The plan for the day was to hike Hurricane Hill, a very popular hike in Olympic NP....the forecast was for temps around 33 degrees increasing to about 42 by noon.  We have plenty of layers so weren't concerned about being cold, but I forgot to pack gloves.  So we stopped on the way and picked up a couple of pairs.  

I'm just going to load a bunch of photos....scroll thru and enjoy the sights.  The drive into the park.

Starting the hike up to Hurricane Ridge (over 4 miles roundtrip and lots of elevation change), we almost immediately saw a deer....completely unafraid of us.

 

Beautiful views!

Just a little too much cloud cover for perfect photos.

Snow still on some of the north faced trees.

Alot of wildflowers! 

 

A small buck and doe.

 

Closeup of the buck.

 

 

 

Saw a marmot - fluffy little creatures!

 

 

You can see Hurricane Ridge off at the right hand side of the mountain.

That accomplished in a couple of hours, we had a quick sandwich I'd packed and headed down the mountain to the other hike of the day.  This one, just a short one to see Madison Falls.  We drove thru some Washington State Forest to get there - a lovely long tree lined road, turning to gravel at one point.

 

Saw a doe just on the side of the road.....she did not move as we passed by.

The Little River passes thru the valley and Madison Falls feeds into it.  Lovely blue-ish water.

 

Short hike to a lovely little waterfall.

 There were some lovely mossy trees on the trail.

The moss made everything so quiet sounding.

 

Me posing in front of a nice large tree....we also walked another 2 miles on Cascade Rock trail before calling it a day.....

 

 

Port Angeles, Washington

 Time to move on from the city.  We packed up all our belongings and caught a quick Uber over to the downtown Hertz location.  I didn't read the paperwork closely enough as we arrived at the office at 8AM - but on the weekends they don't open until 9AM....so we waited in a drab parking deck storefront with 2 other couples who apparently didn't read the same fine print!  But soon we were on our way to the Seattle ferry dock.  Quick loading and we were on our way for the hour long ferry across the Puget Sound to Bremerton and Olympic National Park.

 

 They have a nice restaurant on board - it was perfect weather for a big cup of hot chocolate and watching Seattle fad away.

 Lovely shoreline 

 

The bow of the ferry, other folks enjoying the nice views....

 

 

Approaching Bremerton.

Unloaded from the ferry, there was about a 2 hour drive thru some towns but mostly forest to the town of Port Angeles where we'll stay for a few days.

We stopped by the Olympic National Park visitor center to pick up some trail maps and stretch our legs.  Not a huge visitor center but there is a nice trailhead to get a feel  for things.  

It was just a lovely trail with an abundance of greenery.  After we splashed thru  a few mud puddles, we decided to call it a day since we hadn't really donned hiking gear.

 Off to check into our next AirBnb....it's lovely, well equipped and quite comfy, much nicer than a hotel room.

 

Seattle

 A bit of a lower key day today....first order of business was a bit of business.  We had applied for Global Entry status with US Customs a month or so ago.   This lets you bypass most of the security at airports - and sense we will be traveling quite a bit, we thought it would be worth it.  You have to submit to a background check and provide documents to prove who you are....that all completed, we were given the go-ahead to schedule an appointment for an in-person interview at a US Customs and Border Control location.  Our only closeby options were Charlotte airport or Wilmington.  Neither one of those had appointments available.  Very strange, but we checked the appointments at the Seattle airport and we got that scheduled easily.  So today was the day - a nice walk towards the light rail station thru the downtown busy morning.  

 

We boarded the light rail to take us back to the airport.  Unfortunately, we had boarded the train in the wrong direction!  Silly mistake - easily fixable by a quick hop-off and hop-on the correct direction.....

For some reason, the train was not very busy today.

 

Quite the long trek but we found the Customs office.  Easy peasy interview.....not really sure why we needed to do it but we're all set now.  Hopefully we'll breeze thru security from now on.

 After the interview, it was time for lunch....I had Chinatown on my list of places to visit so we hopped off the train at the entrance.

 

 I was intrigued by the fact that the road signs were in both English and Chinese....just thought it was a bit odd 

 We quickly picked out a restaurant that looked "authentic"....definitely was since we were the only pasty people in the crowded restaurant.

My normal order - Szechuan chicken....it was very good and the hot tea was very nice.   

Unfortunately, the walkabout we had after lunch was not as amazing as I was expecting.  I love a good Chinatown, with outside markets and odd Chinese stuff.....but that really wasn't there.  It was just a few blocks of Chinese shops, obviously very authentic but not very "tour-able" as I didn't want to go inside and just be nosy without buying anything.  So we wandered back to the train with full bellies.  We had a day-long pass so we used it to ride all the way to the small town of Redmond.  We had read about a river trail there but never really found it....back on the train without even a photo.....

The final thing I had on the list was to go to Kerry Park where they say you can have a wonderful view of the Seattle skyline.  It did not disappoint....but it was a very, very steep climb up side streets and stairs.... I snapped several beautiful shots. 

 And then we tried a few "holding something up that is really in the distance" shots.  We quickly decided we weren't very good at it.....caught a city bus back down the hill to our apartment.  Only 13,500 steps today since we had a good bit of train/bus travel.