vacation surprises

Phil505 and I are turning into a couple of camping fools. We spent four days at Fort Stevens State Park on the Oregon Coast with our church,

then we had two days at home to wash a million loads of smelly campfire clothes and restock our supplies, and then we headed north to Sequim Bay State Park (pronounced Squim, I guess it's a Native American thing) near the Puget Sound for another four nights of camping in the wilderness. That's a lot of camping.

Wilson came with us on the church campout. He loves the beach and now that he's learned some manners, he has totally turned into a nice little camping dog. . .

 as long as he has his own chair to sit on.

Or if he can steal the chair of a poor innocent young man.

For the second trip we left Wilson in the hands of some friends from church because we knew one day we were going to be in a no dogs allowed zone and he wouldn't have liked staying at the campground by himself for 8 hours (plus the ranger probably would've frowned on that). So we dropped him off and headed for the Olympic Peninsula.

Neither one of us had been there before, even my born and raised in the northwest stud muffin. I liked that whole 'exploring someplace new' element. It's so much fun to see new places together. Like this place. . .

Yes, folks, the little town of Sequim had a scrapbook store. And a cute one at that. I'm always on the lookout for my favorite kind of stores and this one just popped out as we drove through town.

One day we hiked down to the spit (n. a narrow point of land projecting into the water) and what-do-you-know, a little zen in a rock garden. Someone obviously had too much time on their hands.

Kind of cool in an I'm not really all that into zen kind of way.

I knew we were going to the Puget Sound. I knew about the Strait of Juan de Fuca and that there were lots of little islands in the San Juans, but I was still unprepared for all. the. water. Every where you looked you could find water.

One last thing. I have not read any of the Twilight books. I'm not a 'Twihard'. . . at all. But my sister is. She forced me to watch the first movie with her (which, as it turns out, was a total waste of nearly two hours of my life that I'll never be able to gain back. Vampire love, really???) Anyway, I had to send her a few pictures while we were so close to Forks, the town where the story is set. She was flipping out that we didn't drive the extra 71 miles. Uh, no thanks. We were in Port Angeles and I guess part of the movie takes place there.

And it looks like Phil505 is totally team Jacob all the way. Jenny said, "Boo. . . Team Edward." Whatever.

Funniest thing. . . if you're not driving to Forks and still want Twilight trinkets to send to your sister, check the local Walmarts :)