i'm still kind of exhausted, but Olympic National Park is wonderful and i want to go back with C in tow the entire time and a better plan. we only had one full day of rain, and that day was spent driving, and visiting beaches that are still awesome in the rain. that rainy day was also the first of our two-night stay at the
Quileute nation's resort, which is very nice in an understated way and is right on the beach. highly recommended. more about that later, along with elk and tulips.

we stumbled onto prime shellfish harvesting time at a state park on our way to Hurricane Ridge.

and it was foggy and snowy at the top of the mountain. sometime i will go there later in the year and actually see more. as we drove back down we got below cloud level and could see well out into the Strait of Juan de Fuca when we weren't staring at the blacktail deer.

after that day, we started traveling the southern route of the 101 loop, which for us was faster since we weren't crawling along the (oh so scenic) Hood Canal at 35mph. which led us to the nearer rainforest.

after that, we had a quiet day where our main activity was getting C to the Bremerton ferry. and then we struck out for the Pacific coast.

the thing to do with the picture of the rock is to view it at
original size and count the starfish. (i've found at least 19.)