Day 3

Day 3 found us rising 6:00ish because we had a long distance to go and I had a lot planned for along the way.

We prudently familiarized ourselves with the route of escape from any looming tsunamis.


You know you're in a beautiful place when these are the roadside weeds:


Our pleasant drive took us past this sign:


Soon we were parking at Ruby Beach which ended up being Delaney's favorite place of the whole vacation.





Delaney put her birthday camera to very good use:

In fact, at the trip's end, she had snapped over 680 photos! I'd like to thank her for allowing me to use a bunch of her great shots throughout the blog posts you see before you.

Sadly, we had to get going, but it wasn't long before we passed this sign:

There are very few actual rain forests in the U.S. This one gets 12 to 14 feet of rain each year!


Jeff with the "J" tree:


Even Tobias was smiling:

(Almost.)

We were running out of time 'cause we had a ferry to catch, so we had to skip driving up Hurricane Ridge.

More roadside weeds:



A family friend lives nearby, so we dined with him.


Art is a nice guy who entertained us with stories of climbing New England's power lines during ice storms. I'll bet his family was happy when he retired from that job!

Then we were off to Port Townsend where we learned the 6:45 PM ferry was full, as was the one which left at 8:30 PM.

You're supposed to make reservations? Who knew? In my defense, I did a lot of research in the weeks leading up to our trip and I must say, the Washington State Ferry website was not very user-friendly.

Our next shot at crossing to Whidbey Island would be at 6:30 AM the next day. I was told that if we got to the terminal at 5:45 AM then we'd be pretty likely to get a spot on the ferry. Oh, goody.

So what's a family of out-of-staters to do?

Why, get a room for the night (that was not allotted for in the vacation budget), of course...


...and then explore Port Townsend, an old town full of beautiful buildings like this one:


See all the little birds that landed so artistically in the photo below?