The Grand Tour of the Peninsula

Today was a marathon, too full of great things. It should have been a four or five day loop, I think. We played in tidepools along the coast. The girls saw and tentatively touched seastars, anemones, barnacles, and mussels. They climbed on beach logs, and made wishes on "wishing stones"--the round beach stones that have a white line running all the way through them. Gloria's wish every time was to have her family with her. I think my poor girl is getting homesick.

We drove north and into the mountains along a beautiful mountain lake. At the main visitor center for Olympic National Park, Gloria took the pledge and was awarded her junior ranger badge. We saw a movie about the park and a display on the animals that live in the park.

Then, Gloria's and Leona's favorite part of the day, we found the best playground ever in Port Angeles, on the northern coast. It had a tire swing that would spin fast enough to satisfy Gloria and bring out squeals of laughter from her. Volunteers put the whole thing up, and it had a play town and an elaborate fort. The climbed and swung and spun. At a pretend ice cream stand, Gloria and Leona sold each other ice cream for $30 a scoop.

We drove on around the peninsula to the east and stopped at the Dungeness Wildlife Refuge to take a walk. If we had been up a ten mile hike, we could have walked to the New Dungeness Lighthouse at the end of a long narrow sandbar. But instead, we walked a mile or so and admired the lighthouse from afar. We took some back roads along the edge of the coast to try to get a better view of the lighthouse and came across a restaurant called The 3 Crabs. It was delicious--a wonderful accidental find. And a couple came by to say how well-mannered my girls are. Gloria beamed. After dinner, we saw a rainbow over the cascade mountains--so vivid it seemed almost flourescent. It was the girls' first rainbow, and they pretended to take pictures of it with the viewmaster.

It would have been the end of a very nice, really long day exploring. But we were still almost 150 miles from home. Fortunately, the girls fell asleep in the car and mom didn't. We made it back to Rosie just before midnight. The headache I woke up with confirmed that the trip would have been better made over a few days, but it was definitely an adventure worth having one way or the other.