After visiting Hurricane Ridge ski area a couple of weeks ago, I thought it would be a fun trip to go back with skiis and give the $20-lift-ticket ski area a try. It was super fun and Sara had a blast - grabbing onto the rope tow was a learning experience and she realy had to put her whole body onto it to make it work. :) Anyway, more on that later.
The weekend started off quite eventfully. After packing up early Saturday, we headed to the Edmonds-Kingston ferry to take over to the penninsula. We showed up about 40 min early and decided that Angela had plenty of time to take Sara to go scare up some breakfast for us. Best laid plans…. Some combination of a longer walk than anticipates, Sara wearing croks that were a little big for her (and kept falling off), and line at the breafast place resulted in a race to get onto the ferry - one that the ferry one. I was on the ferry with the van, but Angela and Sara were stuck on the Edmonds side and had to wait for the next one (which was ~1.5 hours later). They did end up making it over on the next one, but it was too late in the day to go skiing so we had to revise our plans…
Silver lining though, kingston is a very cute town - they have a live music venue, two wine tasting bars, several breweries, an amazing crepe place (below), and tons of food options to choose from (from Pizza to Poke). I got a crepe (since my breakfast was stuck in Edmonds), which was amazing.
I also took a walk through town and into a city park (called “the quiet place”). They have trails that leave straight from the center of town and head up through ravines/forested areas into this park and beyond. I really like the idea of “walking” from town to forest, so this really appealed to me.
Since skiing was out for the day, we did some walking tours of Port Townsend and Port Angelas. At port Townsend, we found a wine bar/hotel called “the bishop”. They had apparently just opened and were going through a bunch of finishing touches on the property, but the outside was quite beautiful - would be a great place to have a bottle in the summer. The inside was nice too and Sara made a new friend with the waitres. It took her several attempts before she could walk up to her to ask for food, but once she did - Sara got to choose her own cheese and crackers, which was great fun.
Bonus - we saw a bunch of dear hanging out in the garden. Hopefully they come through again when we go back in the summer…
After bishop, we stopped at the first section of the olympic discover trail, called the John Scott trail (named after a biker who advocated for the trail I think).
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The trail was fun, but really made for bikers. We made it a litle over a mile and got the feel for the trail before heading back. This was a good scouting expedition - I’d like to do the olympic discovery trail at some point so we got some info, picked up a map/brochure and got a feel for the trail.
After our short hike, we stopped at Finnriver cidery, which has become a bit of a mainstay for us on the peninsula. Sara loves the games and they have great food/cider.
There is an organic market across the street that we have not been to before - but looked like a great place to get ingredients for dinner. The market ended up being a bit pricy - especially after Sara threw some random things in the basket… - but we made a great dinner that night, Thai noodles with vegetables and curry sauce. We slept in the van that night in a camground right after the entrance to the Olympic NP - campsite was called “Heart O’ the Hills Campground”. In classic form, I didn’t take any pictures of the campsite - but we had a lovely fire and watched part of a movie before bedtime.
The next morning, we headed straight up the hill to go skiing! The ski area at hurricane ridge is super fun - 3 rope tows, $20 tickets, and tons of backcountry for when you get bored. Sara figured out the rope tow the 2nd or 3rd time on it, here’s a quick video of her wrapping herself around the rope.
It was cold, but clear skies the whole time we were there. Sara skiied for probably 2-3 hours before she needed a break - but she was an amazing skiier the whole time.
She has started this new thing where she “barks” while coming down the hill because she is the “Powder puppy”. As always, she refuses to respond to Sara - insisting that her new name is biscuit…
I really wanted to head off into the backcountry that afternoon, but Angela wanted to head down off the mountain to get warm. We drove down into Port Angelas, got a snack, and drove to Forks (where we had a motel for the night). We got there in the early afternoon, so we head plenty of time to go for a longer hike - the trip had not been terribly active to this point, so we (I?) wanted to really stretch our legs.
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I probably carried her for 3/4 of a mile, the rest of the 4.5 mi was on her own. She decided she was the teacher and we were the students - so we got a lot of instruction on how to hike - “walk straight here”, “turn here”, “turn the other way here”. Whatever the reason, this was very motivating for her and she was racing along the trail for most of the hike.
It was getting close to dark by the time we got back to the van, so we headed to dinner (Pizza!) and then back to the motel for the night. Angela was eager to get home the next morning (work related) so we headed out early and finished up the 3ish hour trip back to Seattle by about noon.