Tulip Festival and More

Welcome Back to the Dynamic Duo's Blog!

This weeks activities included a trip to the Tulip Festival and Golden Gardens Park. Set in the country side of Skagit County in the small town of Mt. Vernon lies a wonder for sights to see. Imagine looking out onto a sea of water from the beach. Now replace this water with endless rows upon rows of brightly colored Tulips. Absolutely Beautiful! I have never seen such a sight of so many flowers. Forget Strawberry Fields forever, the Tulip field trumps it and then some. Words do it no justice so I will just post the pictures.

The rest of the pictures can be viewed here:

http://photo.net/photodb/slideshow?folder_id=908738

Chrissy's friend and co-worker Kyle came out to visit us last weekend. He was the first visitor to our humble abode. He said that he had a great time here and we had fun having him! Thanks for coming out Kyle! We also felt it was a perfect time at the Tulip Festival to take his Senior Picture. After some ridicule and fussing, he finally played along. The result is as follows:

Too funny!

Before Kyle left, he wanted to visit the Ballard Lock & Dam. This is the barrier that stands between the Salt Water of the Puget Sound and the Fresh Water of Lake Union. This also happens to be the home of the Salmon Ladder. Salmon need to get back to their birthplace in order to breed. With the obstruction of the Dam, they were no longer able to make this epic journey. Therefore a "Salmon Ladder" was created to allow access between the two bodies of water. The Salmon Ladder is less of a ladder and more of a series of steps. Salmon have incredible jumping abilities that allow them to jump or climb of the steps that stand between the waterways. This is an amazing sight to see when hundreds of thousands of Salmon make this trip. Unfortunately, the Salmon spawning period does not happen until June. So we were not able to see any fish. Although we will be back in June. So look out for that. We were able to check out the rest of the Lock though:

Some more pictures can be found here:

http://photo.net/photodb/slideshow?folder_id=908739

Last week Monday was a beautiful day for a picnic. So why not go to the beach? Golden Gardens Beach is located on the West End of Ballard overlooking the Puget Sound and the Olympic Mountains. It was kind of cool to see that a LOT of people also had the same idea. It was an awesome people watching opportunity primarily due to the fact that everyone was having such a great time. Also, the sunset was unbeatable.

Now onto the side notes. Often I would peer out our window at the building across the street. I always thought it would be a good place to skateboard, although I lack the skills to test it out. Fortunately a group of skaters also shared my interests. So I busted out my Zoom lens and took pictures from the balcony.

Last Sunday I surprised Chrissy with a breakfast delicacy courtesy from the one and only Judy Meier (Chrissy's Mom). Even though it may look like I had no idea what I was doing, those who have had HULK PANCAKES before know that they turned out perfect. Thank you Judy for the wonderful recipe!

Finally, I was acting up the other day. So Chrissy felt the need to put me on time out in the corner until I learned my lesson.

UNTIL NEXT TIME FOLKS!!!!
Dynamic Duo Signing Off

Olympic Peninsula

This last weekend we took our first Big Trip. Since it was the last weekend that our friends Blake and Kris were living in Port Angeles before they moved to California, we decided to go visit them. We left early Saturday morning for out trip to the Olympic Peninsula; the most North-West part of Washington and the Continental United States. In order to get there, we had to take a car ferry across the Puget Sound from Edmonton to Kingston (ya mon). From there it was a 3 hour drive to the Dungenese Spit located in Sequim. The spit is basically a 7 mile sand bar that goes out into the Pacific Ocean. It creates a giant bay that is extremely calm. It also over looks Canada (eh).

Along the way we came across an old friend. Sammy the Salamander.

Our next stop was Lake Crescent. This is a 624 feet deep lake that was created by the glaciers from the last Ice Age. The water is a brilliant Aqua Blue and was absolutely stunning. From there we took a hike around the Olympic National Forest. There is a trail that lead to the Marymere Waterfall. Both the trek up there and the Waterfalls themselves are stunning. All of the trees are covered in lush mossy vegetation and ferns. I've been to the jungles of Costa Rica, but those don't even compare to what we saw here. I HIGHLY recommend everyone to get a chance to see it at least once in your life. I guarantee you will have a new respect for nature.

After the days activities we stopped over at Kris & Blake's for a giant Barbecue. It was mostly OPI (Olympic Peninsula Institute) and Americorps Non-profit group members attending, but we were made to feel very welcome.

The next day we awoke at 7:00am to begin the rest of our journey. Unfortunately we were greated with an abundance of rain. We had been fortunate enough to enjoy an absolutely Beautiful day on Saturday, but had not lucked out on Sunday. Regardless, this was not going to stop us from seeing the sites. Our first stop was Forks; home of Stephanie Meyers famed Twilight Series. Besides various references to the books, there was not a whole lot going on. The city is actually only a mile long with basically one street. From there we went to another Twilight landmark; La Push. This is a small Native American city on the West Coast. We wanted to hike to Second Beach, but it was raining way too hard for that.

Next stop was the Hoh Rain Forest. We were able to take the 10 mile road up to the ranger station, which gave us a chance to check things out without having to leave the shelter of the car. This is what I had imagined when I heard about the rain forest. With even more moss and ferns than the Lake Crescent trails, the Hoh Rain Forest was lush, green and full of life. We even saw a giant Elk running aross the river.

The final stop was at Ruby Beach. Since it was STILL raining we just looked from a far. This, along with pretty much everything we saw, will have to be seen again on a nicer day.

This is definitely one of the places [Olympic Peninsula] that we will visit again. We think it would be really fun to camp there on the Beach in La Push and maybe stay for an extra day. The drive back was a long one (4 hours) in the rain, but all in all it was WELL worth the trip.

The rest of the Pictures can be viewed at the below Address:

http://photo.net/photodb/slideshow?folder_id=906319

Also, I'm curious if people are actually reading these posts... And the Monday Night Monopoly score is 3-2 Chrissy.