The more I visit the Olympic National Park, the more I consider it one of the forgotten National Parks, especially visiting Lake Quinault during the late winter/early spring. Compared to other popular parks, the Olympic NP is a sprawling, untamed wilderness, barely eeked back from the devouring rainforest every season. Lake Quinault experiences its own…
The Olympic National Park is known for its wilderness and staggering beauty. The park is huge, encompassing much of the Olympic Peninsula in Washington. The South Olympic Coast is just a small portion of the Park. Not many realize, though, that the park is not continuous. One portion of the park contains the Hoh Rainforest,…
Living on the Kitsap Penninsula has its perks. There are several cities with ferries into downtown Seattle, which makes commuting for work or accessing extra amenities easy. The cost of living is better than most of the great Seattle-Tacoma metro area. Most importantly, though, is the easy access to Washington’s amazing nature. After living in…
Every beginner backpacker should learn the “Ten Essentials.” With these ten essentials covered, any new backpacker should be comfortable along the trail. In this post, I’ll cover why the ten essentials exist, who created this list, and what the list includes. Why Ten Essentials for Backpacking? Beginner backpackers tend to overpack or underpack. They don’t…
When heat hits the Pacific Northwest, people flock to the lakes and higher elevations. Most homes do not have air conditioning – nor have they needed it, until recent climate change. That’s why we escaped Bremerton to backpack in the Olympic National Forest at the end of June. We chose the Gray Wolf trail for…
Don’t let the impression of just a few miles sound like an easy hike; Mount Walker is a steep, 2000′ elevation gain hike that is rated as moderate by the rangers and by All Trails. To be fair, the trail is well maintained, easy to follow, and pretty smooth. However, the slope is relentless. During…
Towards the end of our honeymoon last summer, we were getting hot, exhausted, and homesick. I ended up not wrapping up the last few days of the trip in blog partially due to a lack of consistent internet and the fact that my previous uploading method for pictures turned out ineffective. I had been blogging…
Phillip gets a birthday card every year from his “Aunt” Olga that lives in the Netherlands. When I asked how they’re related, no one could say for sure, just that her last name is Van Reijn so must be through Phillip’s fathers’s mother. We meant to mail her a letter months earlier, but with wedding…
There is a very distinct different culturally and architectural between the public transportation services in London and Paris. Never once in London did we feel unsafe, like we typically do using public transit in Southern California. The stations also may have felt worn and well used in places in London, but never terribly dirty and…
Last summer, Phillip and I went up to Big Bear to search for a wedding venue, but made a weekend trip out of it with all there is to see and do in the area. People often ask us why we chose Big Bear as a place to get married, which we answer with a…