Weekend Getaway

We were finally able to go away for our anniversary and decided to stay at the Inn at Port Ludlow Resort near Port Townsend! This is a picture I found of the resort from the internet. We had stayed there a few years ago and decided to go again because it is close to where we're planning a family reunion for my family. We had such a nice time! It was a whirlwind trip because we wanted to be able to see as many sites as we could on the Olympic Peninsula in just 2 days. We were so lucky to have Grandma and "Bumpa" LaPerle watch the kids for us. We left Friday morning and headed over to Sequim, WA which is about an hour from the Edmonds/Kingston ferry.

Here's me standing on the bridge in front of the resort. It was a very nice and relaxing place place to stay.

Our family will be staying in vacation homes in Sequim in about 3 weeks, so we went to check them out ahead of time. The weather was just perfect and the area over there is absolutely gorgeous. We visited so many different places, it's hard to capture all of them.

Here we are at one of the beautiful rugged beaches near Sequim which is on the coast of the Strait of Juan de Fuca.

We then headed to the Sequim Dungeness Spit which is a 5 1/2 mile long sand spit jutting out from the northern edge of the Olympic Peninsula. We took the beautiful, forested 1/2 mile hike down to the spit and then enjoyed the views of Vancouver Island in the distance and exploring on the beach. Most of the beaches on the peninsula are beautiful in a rugged way with a little sand, but lots of driftwood and colorful rocks. We picked out a few beautiful rocks to bring back for Tyler and Maddie (shh, don't tell, we took from the natural environment! You could hear them clanking around in Jeff's pockets on the hike back and we hoped the ranger wouldn't make us put them back!) We are excited to come here again with my family and I know the kids will have a blast playing in the water and exploring and making forts out of all the driftwood!

As we were driving away from the Dungeness Spit area, all of sudden there were deer -- a doe and her 2 fawns right in someone's yard! We then saw another family later that day and then more the next day right off the road by our car! It's so fun to see deer so close like that!

The views of all the beaches and scenery we saw were gorgeous. This view reminds me of the Oregon coastline.

We saw so many places over the weekend that it's hard to name them all and we don't even have pictures of all of them. One of my other favorites was Lake Crescent. There are so many beautiful trails and hikes to see waterfalls and such. After all the sightseeing, we drove to Port Angeles, per recommendation from the locals, to find a restaurant that served fresh Dungeness crab and seafood. We stopped in a restaurant named "Bella Italia" (does that name mean anything to anyone??) and naively asked for a table for two. The hostess asked if we had a reservation and of course we didn't think we needed one. She said without one the wait would be about an hour. So we decided to go somewhere else, but on the way out I saw a copy of "Twilight" highlighted on the hostess' table. Maybe one of you can fill me in on the correlation between this restaurant and the book, since it's been awhile since I read it. I defintely could picture the places where "Bella" got lost in Port Angeles, there are a few rough places downtown by the water. Well, we didn't get to eat there, but one of the waiters followed us outside and highly recommend that we go to a place back in Sequim that served delicious crab and seafood, northern Italian style. He said he knew the cook and highly recommend it, so we drove the 20 minutes back, and it definitely was worth it! I can still taste the crab cakes, and Jeff's halibut with couscous, morelle mushrooms and sweet corn. Yum! Crab cakes are a must when you are in the Dungeness valley area.

Well, all in all, this was a great trip, and we wish we had more time to see everything. We're so lucky to have all this beauty to experience only an hour or two away. I can't wait to go there with my family again in July!