Beachfront Camping

Last weekend was Matt's last weekend out here, so we took him to see something he'd never seen before (from America): the Pacific Ocean. We went to Olympic National Park to see the Washington Coast firsthand. We hiked a trail that followed the beach, and set our tents up right in the sand, along with our campfire. We watched the sun setting over the ocean, then fade into the stars. We saw several shooting stars, a satellite, and the space station, as we watched the tide roll in over the glow of the campfire. We fell asleep to the lullaby of the waves and woke up to the bark of a sea lion. We saw starfish and sea anemonies and scaled a rock wall trying to aviod the incoming tide. It was a marvelous adventure!

Urban Blackberries

Less than half a block away from our apartment lies a HUGE patch of wild blackberries. Blackberries are all over the place here. On the edge of the sidewalks, lining parking lots, in vacant lots, EVERYWHERE. Ned picks them everyday at his worksite to go with his lunch. We filled this bowl up in about 45 minutes, and we could've kept going all night if we didn't run out of room. 100% organic too :) Mmmmm!

Mount Rainier

This is Mt. Rainier (the top 2 pics), my favorite mountain ever, and one of the largest mountains in the U.S. It also happens to be a volcano. We see this mountain towering above us almost every day on the drive to work. On Saturday, we ventured the 2.5 hours to the actual National Park, hiked 6 miles in, and saw this. Definitely ranks up there as one of the most beautiful places in the world! (That's my brother Matt in the picture with us- he's been visiting over the summer.) Just one of the many reasons why I love living here. And, one of the many reasons why you should come visit me :)