Allison/Mom came to visit us in May and she nailed the visit in terms of weather. We had this crazy high (?) pressure system just sitting over coastal Washington delivering hot (I'm serious) sun for over a week straight. It was unreal. She barely saw a cloud the entire time and it even hit 80 degrees one day. This photo, above, is from Washington Park in Anacortes. The shooting stars (pink flowers) were blooming and the San Juan Islands glimmered. We had a lovely lunch here!
Jay and Allison
Although her visit was relatively short, we packed in the fun including several days around Anacortes and an overnight to Olympic National Park on the Olympic Peninsula. Although the forecast called for really hot weather, neither Jay nor I believed it and we didn't pack shorts. Believe it or not, I actually could have worn a skirt! I was pretty bummed I didn't bring one....
Here we are at Lake Cresent in Olympic National Park. Note the lack of clouds! We stopped here to look at the old lodge that FDR stayed in when he visited the park.
We drove down to the Hoh Rainforest, because if you are on the Olympic Peninsula, you must stop and give this giant Sitka spruce some love. Allison really got into the love and I'm sure the tree was very happy. The Hoh Rainforest is a magical place... and to see it on a hot and cloudless day was a bit surreal. While we were walking along on the trail Allison happened to mention to Jay that she was hoping to see a Roosevelt elk. Jay replied something along the lines of "well, there's your elk". See the next photo?
This elk was pretty much right on the trail and was very interested in eating all the salmonberry leaves (or flower buds?). I am fully zoomed in, but still we were closer than I wanted to be...the trail had a fence along the side though and I simply pretended it would work. The elk didn't give a hoot about us though, it had salmonberry to gorge on.
I stitched this image together from three photos - these are the huge and famous big leaf maples in the park. See tiny Allison (in a tank top in Washington!) and Jay?
Being on the outer coast in May is lovely because of the Sitka spruce trees! These trees are apparently around in Anacortes, but I haven't found one yet. They really thrive off of the coastal environment and I really thrive off of spruce tip syrup. So it was a treat to be on the coast and harvest a few spruce tips! We made syrup the night after Allison left..... everything in our house smelled delicious.
We also stopped at Rialto Beach to visit the open ocean. Much colder there but still gorgeous!
On Mother's Day we had a huge and fantastic breakfast in Port Angeles. We wandered around the town a little bit to take in all the lovely murals. This mural is supposed to be of the Hoh Rainforest.
This photo almost looks fake! But it is not! We are at the top of Hurricane Ridge in the park. We scaled a 10 ft. high snow bank and took in this lovely view. A little yellow-rumped warbler also came by to say hello, which was a real treat.
The Olympic Peninsula also has a lot of wineries and we all love wine, so we tasted at two places. This place had my name written all over it and I've been staring at it for years but had never gone in. Now I had an excuse with Allison visiting! Their wine was so good that we bought out the store.
Allison had a red-eye flight back east, so we made one last
dinner at our house and enjoyed it outside in the sun before driving her
down to Seattle. It was such a great trip, we were quite sad to see her go. I know that we will be going back east in August to see our families and take in a bit of real summer.....but it always stinks to see family leave especially when you don't know when they will be back west to visit us! We had such fun!
The weekend after Allison left was a mushroom hunt weekend! May is morel month and we scored last year, so we were on the prowl again this year. We can see from the photo that we scored again! Not! We found three morels one day and six the next. Not the bounty we had last year, but we were in a very different place (near Winthrop, WA) from where we were last year.
Here is our campsite along the Chewuch River
We did find these mushrooms called snowbank false morels. It was our first foray into harvesting a mushroom that has a sketchy look alike. We followed the key closely and are 99.99999% sure we identified it correctly. Then I took a ton of photos and sent them out to coworkers that harvest and eat the snowbank false morel and got a thumbs up from two of them. So we nibbled on the schrooms, three small bites each. Jay didn't like the taste and I loved it. Those nibbles went well, so the next night we ate em' all on a mushroom pizza. Delicious!! And still healthy!
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