Hi Friends,
I want to start by saying that I can’t believe it’s the end of July already. I find myself saying that at all points in the year, though. “I can’t believe it’s already March.” “I can’t believe it’s Memorial Day.” “I can’t believe summer is almost over.” Etc., etc.
That being said, I especially can’t believe July is almost over because this month alone I:
1. Have been rushing through the motions of inspection/appraisal/getting homeowners insurance/reviewing closing docs as Ian and I prepare to close on our first house on July 30 (and pray that nothing falls through),
2. Have been up to my ears in work tasks while trying to fit four weeks of appointments into three weeks, and
3. Went on a bucket list road trip and belated honeymoon wrapped in one through the state of Washington.
When I am really looking forward to something, time seems to crawl. Then, when the Big Event comes around–in this case, vacation–it is here and gone in the blink of an eye. This is not unique to me; it’s in fact a fairly well-documented phenomenon. However, this weird too-slow-then-too-fast time warp really did make the first three weeks of this month pass before my brain had time to catch up with the calendar.
Every day since I returned home to West Virginia, I have thought to myself, Maybe today will be the day I write a blog post to tell my family and friends all about my trip. It’s a somewhat daunting task, though! I already know that this post will be a long one, and I can’t imagine how I am going to sort through my pictures to figure out which to share.
My husband and I have both always wanted to go to Washington, even before we knew each other. As two progressive, nature-loving, temperate-and-cloudy-weather-appreciating young people from the East Coast, the Evergreen State and its southern neighbor, Oregon, were basically the Promised Land in my mind. Think about that ever so common trope in media where a young person from a rural state dreams of strutting down the streets of New York City in a pair of business pants but substitute that fantasy with me lying on a mossy rock in the Pacific Northwest, and you have pretty much nailed down my dream.
I was worried that I would set my expectations too high and disappoint myself, but other than flight delays traveling to and from Seattle, our trip was everything I had hoped for. So, without further ado, here is my itinerary for our six-day Washington road trip with stops in Seattle, Sequim, Port Angeles, Forks, the Hoh Rain Forest, Ruby Beach, Olympia, and Mount Rainier.
Day 1: Seattle
Seattle, like literally every other major city, has no shortage of places to stay. I think that on another trip I would opt for something with more local charm, be it a funky airbnb or a bed and breakfast or a boutique hotel, but for our first visit, the Downtown Seattle Hyatt Place suited our needs perfectly.
One of the more niche traits I inherited from my dad is a love for hotel complimentary breakfasts, so finding somewhere to stay with breakfast included was a must. I ended up settling on this particular hotel because it was only a short walk from all of the touristy things we wanted to do, which included the Space Needle, Pike Place Market, the Seattle Aquarium, and the Seattle Art Museum. In fact, it was only a three minute walk to the Space Needle, and I will say that when we arrived at our hotel at 2am (which felt like 5am to our East Coast bodies) after two delayed flights, seeing this iconic architectural feat through the hotel window did give me a burst of energy and excitement.
The first thing we did in Seattle (after sleeping for three and a half hours) was visit Pike Place Market. If there is one thing to do in Seattle, this is it. A good deal of Pike Place is a fish market, but there are also produce stands (at which we bought local blueberries and golden raspberries), restaurants (at which I had an absolutely banging omelet with avocado and crab meat), and all kinds of stores (at which we bought loose leaf tea). 10/10 experience; I could have spent all day there but instead allotted about two hours (including time for brunch).
Our second stop of the day was the Seattle Aquarium. If you are visiting Seattle and hope to do some touristy stuff, I would highly recommend looking into City Pass, which allows you to get up to a 30% discount if you buy tickets for three or more attractions at once. The attractions to which we bought tickets were the Seattle Aquarium, Seattle Art Museum, and Space Needle, but other options included Chihuly Garden and Glass, Argosy Cruises Harbor Tour, Museum of Pop Culture, and Woodland Park Zoo.
Half of the reason why we chose to visit the Seattle Aquarium was that I like aquariums. The other half was that Ian and I are both big fans of The Last of Us, and the Seattle Aquarium is a very important location in The Last of Us II. On our visit, we did not see any fungus-infected zombie-like creatures or any human freedom fighters, but I did thoroughly enjoy seeing a variety of fish, seals, otters, and sea cucumbers.
Our third stop of the day was the Seattle Art Museum. For someone who is not an artist, I adore art museums and try to go to them in any city I visit. The Seattle Art Museum had so many different exhibits from so many different parts of the world/artistic movements. Again, I could have easily spent a day at the art museum alone. My favorite exhibit was a regional set titled Poke in the Eye: Art of the West Coast Counterculture. The pieces in this exhibit were funky and absurdist in a way that really spoke to me.
Day 2: Seattle
If we had only one day in Seattle, I think Ian and I could have done all the touristy things we wanted to do: Pike Place Market, the aquarium, the art museum, and the Space Needle. However, since we had two days and were running on only about 3.5 hours of sleep (plus some jet lag) the first day, we chose to go to bed early and hit the Space Needle the following morning.
Like Pike Place Market, the Space Needle is a quintessential Seattle attraction. It is most popular to visit around sunset, so we chose to go in the morning when it was less crowded. We also got timed entry tickets in advance, which I would highly, highly recommend. Ticket lines have been known to wrap around the structure, but we got in right away.
The Space Needle was not as tall as I had expected, but it was still neat to visit and to ride the elevator to the top. It was a clear, sunny day (according to all of the locals we met in shops and restaurants, quite uncharacteristic for the city), so we could see all the way out to Mount Rainier. The gift shop also had a lego replica of the Space Needle, which I appreciated.
Our second afternoon in Seattle was my favorite. We chose to spend some time in the Capitol Hill neighborhood, eating at a pizza place called Ian’s, getting drinks and pastries at Victrola Coffee Roasters, visiting a used bookstore with eight cats “on staff” (my personal heaven) called Twice Sold Tales, sorting through vinyls at Royal Records, and thrifting at a Goodwill with much cooler clothes than our local Goodwill has. If I were to return to Seattle, I think I would opt to stay in this neighborhood and spend more time there. I felt very at-home.
Day 3: Road Trip with stops in Sequim, Port Angeles, and Forks
While we walked pretty much everywhere in Seattle, we definitely needed a rental car for the next leg of our trip. We ended up renting a Rav-4 from the Sixt rental facility associated with the airport. Driving through the Olympic Peninsula was undoubtedly my favorite part of the week, and I would return to spend an entire week there. It began with an accidental ferry ride.
I know what you are thinking: What is an accidental ferry ride?
Well, there are two ways to get from Seattle to the Olympic Peninsula. One way is to go south through Tacoma. The other is to take a ferry to Bainbridge. We did not intend to take the ferry, but my GPS was acting extremely wonky for the duration of our time in Seattle, and we may have accidentally ended up in a boarding lane with no way to get out.
Ian was more than a little annoyed with me but still ended up having a good time. I think he said something along the lines of, “That was cool, but I would have appreciated some heads-up.”
Yeah, I thought. Me too.
It was just over two hours to get from Seattle to Sequim, where we stopped for lunch at a diner and then visited a lavender farm. Fun fact: Sequim is considered the lavender capital of the United States, so we had plenty of farms to choose from when deciding where to visit. The lavender farm I chose supposedly had an ice cream stand with lavender ice cream, but it was unfortunately closed at the time of our visit. It was still nice to wander through the “purple haze,” as the farm was called.
It was about half an hour after that to get from Sequim to Port Angeles, where, you will be pleased to know, I did get some lavender ice cream while visiting the wharf.
While in Port Angeles, we also visited the Olympic National Park Visitor Center and had dinner at the Italian restaurant where Bella and Edward have their first unofficial date in Twilight. There were a lot of people in Twilight-themed outfits at the restaurant. At this point, Ian–who has neither read the books nor watched the movies–asked if I had unknowingly dragged him on some teenage-vampire-romance pilgrimage, to which I said no.
(While privately thinking, maybe.)
Bella’s ravioli on the menu:
Ian giving me side eyes while watching me order Bella’s ravioli:
The Twilight pilgrimage continued with a two-day stay in Forks, a small town just outside the Hoh Rain Forest that gained attention for being the setting of the books. In Forks, we stayed at Miller Tree Inn. It was my first time at a bed and breakfast and certainly will not be my last. The room was so nice, the breakfast was so good, and the owners were just lovely. I would return to Miller Tree Inn in a heartbeat.
Day 4: Hoh Rain Forest
The Hoh Rain Forest is 45 minutes from Forks, the nearest town, and my goodness, it was an absolute dream. With moss, ferns, crisp air, and unbelievably tall Douglas Firs, this section of Olympic National Park was everything I had hoped for.
The Hall of Mosses Trail and Spruce Nature Trail are about one mile each and were a great place to start our day. The longest trail in the park is the Hoh River Trail, which is an 18.5-mile out-and-back trail. At some point in time, I think it would be very cool to do the whole thing. On this day, we decided to just walk until we got tired. Here are two of my favorite pictures from the day:
Day 5: Road Trip with stops in Ruby Beach, Olympia, and Packwood
Leaving Forks on day 5 of our trip made me very sad. I genuinely could have spent the full week there.
On our way out of town, our first stop was at Ruby Beach, which was about 45 minutes away. I do not know what to say about Ruby Beach other than that it was beautiful. I will let the following pictures speak for themselves:
From Ruby Beach, it was about a 2.5-hour drive to Olympia, the capital of Washington. Olympia is a big-name town for alternative music, specifically the Riot Grrrl movement, and Ian and I found a very apt Riot Grrrl playlist to listen to in the car.
Olympia was a cool town but not entirely what I expected. We enjoyed visiting a farmer’s market, thrift store, record store, and independent bookstore, but something just felt . . . disingenuous. It feels inappropriate to pass judgment on a town where I only spent a few hours, but all of the homelessness that I expected to see in Seattle (but did not–I see more homeless people in my town in West Virginia than I did in this city) was present in Olympia. Seattle also had public restrooms galore; Olympia was the kind of place where you need a code to access any bathroom.
I think the social worker in my brain just has a hard time reconciling a certain brand of progressive ideology with the reality of homelessness and poverty in a “hip” city, but again, I was only there for a very short time and perhaps shouldn’t condemn the area so quickly.
After leaving Olympia, we drove two more hours to reach our airbnb in Packwood, about twenty minutes from one of the entrances to Mount Rainier National Park. The airbnb was not nearly as secluded as the pictures online suggested, but it was still a beautiful place to stay.
Day 6: Mount Rainier National Park
Most people recommend spending at least two days at Mount Rainier National Park to see both sides of the mountain: Paradise and Sunrise. Since we only had one day, we chose to focus on Paradise. This part of the park has many, many different trails for people of all skill levels. It will take you past lakes, up mountains (of course), along waterfalls, and through beautiful fields of wildflowers. In our one day at the park, Ian and I walked 13 miles and ascended the equivalent of 100 flights of steps. Suffice to say, it was a good thing all I had to do the next day was sit on an airplane.
The four trails that we chose to do during our day at Mount Rainier were the Snow and Bench Lake Loop, Nisqually Vista, Myrtle Falls, and Silver Falls. The Snow and Bench Lake trail was the least crowded and also my favorite. We did timed entry to the park and entered through the Stevens Canyon Entrance with no traffic at 8am. Be advised that you need timed entry reservations to Mount Rainier if you plan to enter the park between 7am and 3pm. Reservations go live at 7pm the night before, and I would highly recommend getting online to book your time slot on recreation.gov right then.
Some pictures from the park:
If we had more time and weren’t concerned about running ourselves ragged, we would have added another leg to our trip and visited Leavenworth and North Cascades National Park. However, all things considered, it was the perfect belated honeymoon and a week that I will always cherish.
Until Next Time,
Alexa
(Bonus: my road trip map)
