Always Onward Adventures

Larabee state park round two in the last couple of months - this time with a kayak. Derek came along as well - which was super fun for a change. In total, almost 7 miles of kayaking, playing on the beach, camping, movie watching, campfires, and games galore. Here we are all ready to go: And then the morning paddle - about 3 miles, but very choppy/rough seas. Made paddling any distance really hard… I didn’t get a picture, but we saw some seals from up close - which was super fun - but Sara didn’t seem super impressed. She was far more interested in the bubbles!

We had soo much fun with kayaking the last trip, I decided we just have to see how much more amazing it can be in good weather. And we had a great trip! Sans a small mishap with the paddle :) So - brief synopsis of the trip. We were planning to go to Joemma beach state park but we didn’t leave early enough and the camp was full. We diverted and headed to Pemrose state park - and got the last campsite! Lesson learned here - start earlier in the morning now that the weather is getting better… The first thing we did once we arrived at camp is to go on a quick hike and have some food.

Our first trip to Larabee state park - which is right on Chuckanut bay near Bellingham. Beautiful location and lots of fun stuff to do. There are railroad tracks that run right through the park, which might be n issue for some people, but Sara and I did great (didn’t wake up at all) and it was fun to watch the trains go back while we were playing around. We went on a fun hike and Sara hiked the most I have ever seen her do - almost 2.5 miles!

Our first Van trip as a family - and our first trip with a working battery… :) This was also our first trip with our new inflatable Kayak, which was super fun. Sara and I left early Saturday and got a campsite, bought some groceries, and went on a hike around the south side of deception pass. The hike had some amazing views and we were able to get some play time on the beach as well. Almost a 3 mile hike and Sara did about half of it on her own.

So I decided to try to find something on the Olympic peninsula for this trip. I found an interesting camp near lake Cushman with some trails nearby that looked like fun. Lake Cushman is a beautiful area with some amazing day sites right along the beach. Here are some pictures of the lake ‹ › You can see it in some of the photos below, but the water level was super low - which I suspect had to do with the snow we got and the melt overwhelming the dam (Lake Cushman is man made). It was an erie sight at times with these fields of sandy stumps where the water used to be…

Our latest trip was up to the North Cascades National Park - which was an amazing place, far more than I expected this time of year. It’s a national park, but they allow dogs to hike on trails and they don’t really have an entrance/exit. The place we went hiking was about 3 miles from the end of the road (where the close the north cascades highway for the winter) and right after the big dam/lakes in that area.

We just completed our first 3 day van trip - which was an all around success. We went to three different state parks and saw some very different terrain in each - super fun trip. Also figured out quite a few van optimizations, including how to watch movies and the best way to store clothes. Leadbetter Bay Loop So our first park was Leadbetter state park which is on the very end of cape disappointment. It’s a wildlife preserve and we saw a ton of birds. I didn’t realize until after we got back to the car that dogs were not allowed - so shame on me. The coolest stuff we saw was a stretch of beach where the tide had started cutting away at the land above the beach and caused a bunch of trees to fall and the dune grass north of the loop, which was a stunning view.

Second van trip was a wild success. I decided to do another on nighter with Sara down at Cape Disappointment state park in southern Washington on the coast. The views were amazing - especially the sunset on the first evening, which had the most incredible color spectrum. The van setup worked soo much better as well - still a couple of things to optimize, but we were much more comfortable.