(Pictures are all available in an album in FaceBook.)

Current Location: Bremerton, Washington

Slow down and enjoy life. It’s not only the scenery you miss by going too fast – you also miss the sense of where you are going and why.
~ Eddie Cantor

Last week passed pretty quickly – exploring the area, dropping off resumes, a bicycle ride with Mikel (Jackie’s boyfriend) on Saturday, yoga classes, and some chores about the house. Ashley didn’t get her job at Argosy Cruises but is glad as this frees her up to other opportunities. She’s got a couple more promising positions that she’s excited about.

• 1 new job started
• 2 hiking excursions planned in the near future (Dirty Face and Royal Lake)
• 1 permit acquired for a Glacier backpacking trip in August

It’s not all domestic errands here on the peninsula, however. Sunday we loaded up the truck and headed north, back to Olympic National Park. There we hiked up Mount Storm King and enjoyed an amazing panoramic view of Lake Crescent during lunch. (Although hiked might not be the most accurate word, as we had to pull ourselves up the last bit of loose gravel via a rope. We made like mountain goats, might be a more accurate statement.)

Back down in the valley, we continued on to check out Marymere falls before returning to the truck and driving up to the Sol Duc area to explore the Sol Duc falls. Both were beautiful and had trails lined with fabulous greenery.

After hiking we drove around the north shore of Lake Crescent to see what there was to see. The road dead-ends at a trailhead, so we turned around and stopped at a day-use area to cook supper. What better place to cook and eat than at a picnic table out on the middle of a dock? Supper was tasty and even better as it was seasoned by the views – across the water we could see Storm King and the point we mountain goated to.

Then it was time to head up into the mountains to find a camp site for the night. I’m pretty sure that’s the wildest adventure the borrowed truck has seen – off on a gravel road (path?) up the side of a mountain. 4-wheel drive was never needed but there wasn’t any kind of a shoulder at times. And there was even some mud slung up on the fenders once or twice! We owe a big thanks to Randy for letting us use his truck while we’re here and he’s off traveling for work.

Yesterday morning we had to head back into Bremerton (just over 2 hours away) because Matthew was starting work atwww.bremertonletterpress.com He’s going to be expanding the website, doing some behind the scenes work with the product images, and generally helping with various computer stuffs as he can. He’s excited to be working with a local artistic business!

Lessons Learned:
• It’s awfully nice to explore and camp out of a regular passenger vehicle. We can go so many places we just can’t with the RV.
• There are so many amazing things to do here!
• You just can’t beat a view from a rocky mountain point.

Norma’s plane touches down this evening (Ashley’s mom) – Jackie, Ashley and I are all super excited and have lots of fun planned for the week. It’s going to pass all too quickly but we’re certainly counting down the time until we meet her at the airport. It’s been almost a year since we’ve seen our respective parents!

Exploring away,

Matthew & Ashley