Our October 2010 journey

 "Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. 

Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. 

The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, 

while cares will drop away from you like the leaves of Autumn"

 - John Muir

Here's an armchair tour of photo from our journey for you to enjoy!

  Our vacation travels through Washington, Idaho, Utah and Arizona -
(click on the pictures you want to see larger)

  The Clearwater river is just gorgeous. One of my favorites.

Then on to Yellowstone -

The Tetons were so beautiful with the fall colors -

then through Utah & the golden trees

we'd never been to the four corners before, so did the tourist stop

I loved the petrified forest in Arizona, great walking paths to enjoy the area on foot

the painted desert

we always go to the Grand Canyon when we are in Arizona

We did the Verde Canyon railroad tour, I highly recommend this if you have the time.

a quick stop at Cave Creek Regional park for a quick run & view of the great cactus's

a walk on the Wet Beaver trail

Jack's Canyon camping trip.

 Blue Ridge Reservoir

Flagstaff had a rare tornado while we were there, 

so we had a chance to see some of the damage afterwards

Then on to wind our way back home, we stopped at Bryce Canyon in Utah and took in the sights

 

 

  an important reminder!

Such a great trip, always hard to go home.

I've been married to the same man for 39 yrs. who would've thunk it :-)

We decided to spend our 39th wedding Anniversary on the coast, didn't know we were going into the world of  "Twilight"! The Vampire series book is placed in the Olympic peninsula towns of Port Angeles, Forks and Lapush. We were inundated with twilight signs, good grief......I guess it's been good for these towns that generally had their economic base from logging, which has really been cut back (wow, what a pun - good for me!) but we were looking for hide aways. We stayed the first night in Sekiu  (a fishing community on the coast.) in a "quaint" (there can be various definitions to the word quaint, I'll let you use your imagination on this one.) cabin.
It was very late and it was basically the only thing available.

We then went on to Lake Ozette to do the 9.2 triangle boardwalk/beach hike

You can find out more about this amazing trail, click here -

 We had done with our kids when they were young. That trip ended with a torrential rainstorm, but that is a story for another day.

The boardwalk trail is one of my favorites

The beach walk is so wonderful it travels from - Cape Alava

   

to Sand point. The beach has heads that you walk around, and if the tide is in you have to hike around the heads. Sometimes it is a simple trail. Other times they provide rustic stairs. The last head we had to go around wouldn't you know it the tide had been coming in and we would have had a sketchy rock ledge climb around, so we decided to do the over the head route. When we came off the rocks in our attempt to go around the head we had to circle back to where the trail was. When we came around  the corner we were surprised to see about  an 80 ft.  STRAIGHT up trail with a rope afixed and knots every foot or so for a grip (wish I'd taked a picture, but was too focused about how I was going to do this). In the past my fear level was pretty intense for doing things like this, but my new attitude about life and enjoying opportunities has really kicked in. I wasn't scared at all. I was very surprised in my ability to enjoy the effort without my hands and feet shaking. Guess what the way down was exactly the same STRAIGHT down with a fixed rope. Had to just lean back, hold on to the rope and step down. Just like that - Wow :-)

The next day we went to Ruby beach, so wonderful to hear the waves and walk on the sand

All in all - A wonderful Anniversary!

August 28, 1971 and 2010 were both great days.