We woke up FREEZING this morning. Scott was outside starting a fire with the driftwood he had found, and we ate breakfast, packed up camp, and began our hike out of the rainforest. I can’t say enough how beautiful this area is. Everything is green and fresh and it was just such a cool experience. On our hike out, we saw the Donkey Brigade again!

 

We got to the truck, and headed out! We wanted to make a few stops before leaving the national park. We first stopped at Ruby Beach. The entire beach was made up of rocks and driftwood, and it was a cloudy and foggy morning (typical for the peninsula).

 

We then wanted to stop at the Quinault Rainforest, but got a little turned around and ended up missing it. We drove through the town of Quinault, which was a cute little town with a lodge and some shopping areas. We continued on south, leaving the national park area. We drove through Aberdeen, WA and stopped at a place called Billy’s for lunch. Aberdeen was an old port town, where they used to have a lot of fishing and logging ships come in. Aberdeen is the hometown of Kurt Cobain, as well as a famous serial killer who murdered about 100 men and dumped their bodies into the sea after robbing them. Weird town.

 

We decided to head into Seattle to meet up with Pete for a drink. He works in Bellevue, so we met up and went to the Tavern Hall. I’m sure we looked like a couple of weirdos as we were still in hiking clothes and probably didn’t smell the best, and everyone else was dressed nicely after work. Oh well! We also witnessed a fun encounter with a biker who started screaming at a car “THIS IS A BIKE LANE” when the car was trying to cross the bike lane to get into a turn lane. It’s weird being in a big city after being out in the woods and on our own for quite a while.

We said goodbye to Pete, and headed back to the camper to shower and get a good night’s sleep. Olympic has to be one of our favorite trips so far!