Explore WA: Lake Quinault, Kalaloch, Forks

After dropping our house guest from the weekend, Will, off at the train station the family headed to Olympic National Park again for a 2 day, 1 night getaway. Please pray for Will's safe travels, relationships, and ministry in August. He is college student from SPU who will spend a month in India doing mission work. Follow his journey at http://willisinindia.blogspot.com
Compared to our last camping trip (Explore WA: Olympic National Park), we drove south of Seattle and then went west. We stayed at a campground on the southern part of the park, Willaby Campground on Quinault Lake.

Leighton is showing off her Smokey the Bear button.

 We stayed in an area called the Quinault Rainforest. It is a temperate rainforest (not tropical obviously) but still very pretty. Everything was draped in moss. The only downfall to staying in a rainforest....mosquitoes.

 We took a hike to the the a huge cedar tree. It was dead so the view from inside was very cool.

 The family in front of the big cedar.

 We took a couple more hikes to the World's Largest Spruce, waterfalls, and around the lake...

 Gatton Creek Falls hike put the little girl to sleep.

 But then she was refreshed to play airplane by the lake!

Family photo shoot with self timer... ready for Wes' grilled chicken dinner!

 Rocks, water, and a bucket = entertainment

 Baby is snoozing and Mommy and Daddy are having s'mores

 The next morning we headed as far as west as you can go in the continental US. We stopped at Ruby beach (below) around the Kalaloch ranger station.

 We then went north and stopped in Forks, WA. Their claim to fame originally is the Logging Capitol of the World but more recently they have embraced the Twilight craze and created several tourist traps. We ate lunch on the coast, La Push beach with a few werewolves :)

 As we circle Olympic National Park to come home around the north part, we stopped at Lake Crescent and Wes used the cold water to wake himself up for the drive and Leighton played on the shore until she fell in...

 Ended the day with a little ice cream on the ferry in Bainbridge. I'm not going to name names but somebody was loving it.

Excited for Michael, Katie and Luanne to explore WA next week!!!!!!