It has been a few days since we have returned from vacation but we have been quite busy catching up on everything and going through 1265 pictures has been quite the task.  The image gallery below has been narrowed to 295 pictures to save you some time of looking through them all

To quickly summarize our vacation, it was a blast!  Now to give you the detailed description of each day!

Day 1

Day 1 starts Thursday may 7th.  The day starts in Spokane as we drove from Missoula to Spokane the night before to make the drive a  little shorter.  We left Spokane quite early in the morning so we didn’t have to rush to Puyallup as we had an appointment there at 3:00.  We made the drive to Puyallup in pretty good time only stopping to do one Viewpoint attraction.  This was when we first hit the Columbia River. We took some fun pictures and they turned out pretty good.  One thing I want to point out is that over the ENTIRE vacation, we didn’t have anyone take any photos for us, we took them all ourselves with the help of a little tripod.

Once we arrived in Puyallup, We ate lunch, shopped around a little bit and then went and had Jenny’s nails done why we were waiting for 3 to come around for Jenny’s pampering appointment.  Three finally arrived and Jenny started with her back facial, then moved onto her facial, then had her hair done and highlighted.  All in all it was about a 4 hour adventure, pretty sure she enjoyed it though!  We then went out to dinner with my aunt, uncle and cousin then called it a night.

Day 2

We woke up about 8am to get the day started.  We went to the grocery store to pack up on supplies and headed out of town.  We were destined for Kalaloch Lodge in the Olympic National Forest right on the coast.  Once we arrive we checked into our place, walked a little bit on the beach and then headed to a pretty famous beach called Ruby Beach.  We had tons of fun walking the beaches and exploring the coast line.  We found some shells, cool rocks to play on and went places most didn’t due to the complexity of getting there!  You can see some of these great pictures in the album!

After Ruby beach, we headed back to Kalaloch and walked more on the beach, gathered some firewood (drift wood) took some amazing sunset photos, some funky photos of us having a great time such as jumping in the air and capturing the moment on camera.  We had a couple bottles of wine, some hotdogs and smores, what else could you ask for?  At about 12:30 we decided to pack it up and head back to the room!

Day 3

This was Jenny’s BIRTHDAY!  Happy Birthday Jenny!  We started by getting up pretty early and headed out to the beach for a nice hike looking for little treasures such as sand dollars and anything else we could find. It was an absolute beautiful morning!  We went to the lodge for some breakfast and coffee and then hit the road to Forks and La Push.  It was neat being at the places due to the popular book series Twilight!  Everyone seems to be in a frenzy over these books.  We went to a couple of beaches in La Push, one requiring a 3/4 of a mile hike which was quite fun.  We wrote in the sand, jenny did some “aerobics” and overall just enjoyed the beach!

We headed back to Kalaloch and hit up the beach once again.  We gathered more driftwood for the fire to be and took some even more amazing sunset pictures and pictures of us doing fun things and cool poses with the sunsets in the background.  The evening was PERFECT!  Once again having hotdogs for dinner (how romantic) Chocolate covered strawberries and smores for desert and wine as our beverage.  We both fell alseep on the beach and woke up around 1 am so we packed up and headed back to our room!  A great day this was, full of activities and memories!

Day 4

We slept in a bit this day (9am).  We headed to the beach for a bit and then packed up the room to head towards Port Angeles where we were catching the ferry at 2pm to head to Victoria BC.  We made it pretty much just in time so we grabbed out back packs and jumped on the ferry, ok we walked on but you know what I mean.  We got to use our passports for the first time too, so that was pretty exciting!

The ferry ride was quite fun.  We didn’t see any cool creatures like whales or anything but it was still fun.  Once we arrived in Victoria, we walked around the harbor and looked at all the little vendors that had stuff for sale.  We then went and checked into our hotel room and headed out in search of dinner.  We asked a few people about a good steak house and we ended up at The Keg!  It was amazing!  I had steak and king crab and Jenny had Prime Rib and king crab.  Absolutely amazing!  We then went to this Irish Bar and sat down at the bar and to our surprise, I knew the bartender.  He used to play basketball for the Griz!  Small world huh?  After this we headed back and called it a night, busy day ahead tomorrow.

Day 5

Day five is a Monday if you lost count.  We checked out of the hotel and with our backpacks on our backs, we hit the town in search of breakfast and a way to get to the Butchart Gardens.  It just so happens we were successful in both objectives.  We got onto a tour bus that toured Victoria on the way to the Butchart Gardens, gave us 2 hours to view the gardens and then drove us back to home port where we were to catch the ferry at 4 that afternoon.

The gardens were absolutely beautiful.  They are hard to describe to people that have never been and pictures don’t do justice for what you can actually see.  I’m not saying the pictures are not cool but with your own eyes is WAY better.  We took tons of pictures at the gardens as you can see in the album.  The only downside to this time of year was the rose gardens were not in bloom, but to be honest, that is my least favorite so no big loss.

Once we were done with the gardens and made it back to Victoria, we go onto the ferry and headed back to the USA!  We ate at a really crappy restaurant called the Crab House where we were surrounded by cross dressers which made it an even more interesting dinner to say the least.  We then drove back to Kalaloch and grabbed a camp site on the ocean, setup camp and went to bed as it was a long and exhausting day.

Day 6

We woke up pretty early due to some fighter jets practicing overhead, they were doing some crazy flying which made their engines really really loud.  We took down camp and went and had breakfast at the lodge.  We went to a quite a few different beaches and took lots of pictures of waves crashing over rocks and such.  It was a long full day and was a good one for our last at the beach.  We grabbed a new camp site in a better spot now that we had daylight to see what we were doing, drank some wine, cooked some hotdogs and smores and then hit the tent for the last night.

Day 7

We woke up and took down camp and packed up the jeep for our long haul back to Missoula.  We had 652 miles to make it back home.  We drove straight through, only stopping for gas.  We made it home about 7pm which was nice cause we had some time to relax before going to bed.  I know you may be asking all you did was sit and drive all day, how wore out could you be?  Trust me, driving for over 10 hours is pretty exhausting.

That was our trip in a nutshell!  We had tons of fun and took many great photos as you can see quite a few in the following album.  Thanks for reading and looking at our pictures!  Feel free to leave any comments and/or ask us any questions, we would love to answer them!

Chris and Jenny!

Click the image below or this link to view the vacation album.  296 images!