June 7

Miles Traveled 141
Total Miles Traveled 7053
After Dad did a church service, we packed up and moved to the northern edge of Olympic National Park. We camped at a beautiful campground on the strait of Juan de Fuca. Mom thought it was named after some lady named Wonda Fooka, until she looked at the map and has been a joke ever since. We set up had lunch and headed for Hurricane Ridge. It was a curvy windy trip up the mountain even though it was completely foggy it was still interesting because of the snow, Black Tail dear, wild flowers, and the fact that Rachel was driving. The highlight of the day was the sunset looking across the strait of Wandafooka:-) with the mountains of Vancouver in the background.

June 6

Miles Traveled 104
Total Miles Traveled 6912
We drove to Hoh Rain Forest. Surprisingly it didn't rain. It was crazy it rained when we were in the desert, and not when we were in the rain forest and they measure the rain in feet! We went on 2 short hikes through the rain forest. The trees were covered with Club and Saginplla moss. We found it very different and interesting. After lunch we drove to the beach and took a hike along the beach to rock formations named "split rock" and "hole in the wall"



Split Rock
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Hole in the wall
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June 5

Miles Traveled 215
Total Miles Traveled 6808
We left the Mt. St. Helens area and traveled to the western side of Olympic national park. We camped at a campground on the beach in La Push Washington. After we set up camp, we went to the beach and spent the rest of the afternoon digging canals and building sand castles. The beach had lots of smooth, different colored stones along the shoreline and huge, driftwood logs. The water and air were cold, but that didn't stop the Bald Eagle from coming out to fish.

June 3-4

Miles Traveled:449
Total Miles Traveled:6593
Wednesday we traveled from Stewart State Park to Mt. St. Helens Rv Park in Castle Creek, WA. Thursday we drove out to Mt. St. Hellens. On the way there, we drove up the Toutle River Valley. This area was buried under an average 100 ft of ash from the 1980 eruption. There was an abundance of spring flowers in bloom. Both the State and National Visitor centers were very informative, as was the Mt. St. Helens Creation Museum. There was an excellent film at the Johnson Ridge Observatory. We were impressed by the many different geologic formations (such as layered sedimentation, deep canyons, and petrification) that the 1980 Mt. St. Helens event produced in a short time. Many scientists thought that these formations took a long time to form.

June 2

Miles traveled 278
Total miles 6144
Happy Birthday Rachel! We left the Redwoods and headed to Crater Lake, Oregon. On the way we stopped in Medford, OR for lunch at Olive Garden to celebrate Terry and Rachel's birthdays. ( Terry's was June 1st ) All enjoyed the delicious meal and Drew was actually full when we left. :-) We continued on to Stewart State Park, where we set up camp. Then we headed to Crater Lake. We stopped at the visitor center and when we were leaving the ranger asked the kids to help him with the flag lowering ceremony. We were surprised at the amount of snow still on the ground, in fact only about 9 miles of the 33 miles of rim were plowed yet! This volcanic mountain erupted several thousand years ago and the top collapsed leaving a crater six miles across. Over the years the crater has filled with water from snow melt and rain to an average depth of 1000 feet and at the deepest over 1900 ft. It is one of the clearest and purest lakes in the world. Even though it was stormy and cloudy on the day we were there we could tell it is extremely blue. Even though it was 39 degrees and windy and rainy we were impressed.

June 1

Miles traveled 69
Total miles 5866
We got up late and had a brunch of eggs and pancakes before heading out to explore the Pacific Ocean and the Redwood Forest. We were anxious to see the ocean so we headed there first but it was overcast and foggy so we decided to come back later. One of the things that stood out to us about the Redwoods was it was just Redwoods in the forest compared to the Sequoia's that were mixed with fir and pines. They seem incredibly tall driving next to them but walking among them was even more impressive. We took several easy hikes. Then we headed to the beach. It was still overcast so we had the beach to ourselves, but we didn't mind. It was gorgeous with sharp cliffs not far from the shoreline. We had fun taking some pictures and exploring the beach of smooth stones and driftwood. The water was frigid but it was exciting to have made it from “sea to shining sea”. We drove up the road next to the beach to Fern Canyon and saw 4 bull Elk in velvet right between the road and the beach. One 5X5 and three 6X6's.

May 31

Miles traveled 542
Total miles 5797

Today we left Groveland, Ca near Yosemite and drove toward the Redwoods in northwest California. This morning Jon discovered that all the camper tires had excessive wear and one in particular needed replaced ASAP. So, once we had service we surfed the web and made calls to find a place that was open and had our camper tires in stock on a Sunday. We finally found a Goodyear tire center in Sacramento that had our tires in stock and we had no wait when we got there. We then headed west and took the Redwood highway north and it was after midnight when we arrived at our campground in Klamath River.