In between the two road trips we had some lovely family time in Spokane as well as Pt. Roberts, which is a tiny piece of U.S. territory accessible only through Canada (or by boat). And by had a lovely time I mainly mean eating and drinking… tons of fresh fruit and produce in Spokane and fresh dungeness crab in Pt. Roberts. Ah, the gastronomical joys of vacation!

With a week to kill before my sister and her husband arrived, we decided to take another road trip. Ted wanted to go to Astoria, Oregon, even though I assured him that Oregon was basically a flatter, more boring Washington. So we drove south and ended up an hour south of Astoria in Saddle Mountain State Park, since all the coastal campgrounds were full. The campground was in the midst of endless trees, which was beautiful. Even better, there was a 2 mile hike up to Saddle Mountain right outside of our tent! All we had to do was start walking. So after a very steep 2 miles we were rewarded with some amazing panoramic views of Oregon. Not so bad after all.

The next day we packed up and drove back to Astoria, where we walked around and even visited the movie museum, which of course had props from Goonies and we could even make a short film ourselves.

After Astoria, we continued on to Rainbow Falls State park (which was a bit of an exaggeration) in Chehalis, Wa. The “falls” was more like a 6 foot rapid in the middle of a river. Oh, well. Chehalis did have a garlic festival going on, which is why we were really there. So the next day we enjoyed a myriad of garlic themed food and even had a garlic cupcake, which was surprisingly delicious.

Next on our tour of southern Washington was Rainier National Park, where we stayed at Indian creek campground. It was beautiful and quiet, accompanied by a large lake and some strange, UFO-like cloud formations.

The next day we decided to hike into the goat rocks wilderness, which was one of my favorite hikes so far. It was a long hike, being about eleven miles round trip. We hiked up a ridge and then crossed over and down into Shoe lake. At the top of the ridge we had an amazing 360 view of the mountains, including Rainier and Adams. Shoe lake was yet another gorgeous alpine lake and we enjoyed a bracing (and brief) dip in the glacial water.

Since we still had a few days left, we decided to revisit the Leavenworth area, since we liked it so much. We stayed in the Icicle creek canyon again, though this time at Johnny Creek campground, a little farther up the canyon. For our hike we chose Stuart Lake, which starts out on the same route as Colchuck, the hike we had done previously in Leavenworth. The path for Stuart lake splits off from the path to Colchuck and meanders around a slightly lower elevation with some great views of craggy peaks surrounding the lake. We didn’t jump into Stuart but instead continued on to a field behind the lake, where we could look up and see the glacier and the pass over to Ingalls lake.

Feeling grungy and tired but happy, we spent the last night at our camp with some friends, and then headed back to Home.