Meanwhile, back at the ranch . . .

Just like those old silent movie westerns, I’m going to flash up “Meanwhile, back at the ranch . . .” and take you back to the Olympic Peninsula over a month ago to our vacation (you thought I’d forgotten about that didn’t you?).

In addition to waking up to a beautiful sunrise, there was the wonderful calmness and quiet you get early in the morning by the shoreline.  Some shots were well beyond the focal lengths of the lenses of the cameras I’d brought for myself, I grabbed the one Ann was using to isolate on a heron standing on a rock by the near-by pier.

After a mediocre breakfast (I thought all tourist towns abounded with great breakfast places . . . apparently not Port Townsend), we made our way into the Olympic National Park.  After a stop off at the Visitor’s Center (I must have my maps!!!) we headed up to Hurricane Ridge, one of the most prominent locales in the park and readily accessible to all.

There are lots of interesting views of forested mountains and valleys on the drive up, but we pretty much went directly to the ridge.  In one direction there was a really interesting view . . .

and in the other is the view everyone comes for!

It’s a pretty awesome sight, even with a bit of haze.

After getting our fill of the view, we drove down to the end of the ridge, then back and hiked (well, . . . walked) a bit to the other side of the ridge to get that view.  One of the things that made this trip interesting was that I brought back from Liberia my micro 4/3 camera for Ann (she mentioned she might want to take a photography class) and picked up a new point-and-shoot camera (the Sony RX-100, excellent! Likely my last point-and-shoot ever!), which meant I gave Kit my old one.  So here’s Kit getting a shot of Puget Sound from Hurricane Ridge:

And one of Ann doing her best to break her camera . . .

. . . by taking a picture of me!

The day was passing quicker than we hoped so we decided not to try to drive out to obstruction point (an 8 mile, gravel road that runs perpendicular to Hurricane Ridge and offers a slightly different view of the mountains) and instead to to Sol Duc Falls.  There we had a real hike - easy, but a hike nonetheless - to see a nice set of falls.

We’d decided to return to Hurricane Ridge to see if we could get a stunning sunset shot of the mountains.  The day before, driving towards the park (and into the sun) we were treated to a brilliant display of orange in the sky thanks to high clouds and the setting sun (which is why the late evening shots from the hotel were so nice - pink reflections by the time we checked in) and I was hoping for more of the same.

Long story short, sometimes you win, sometimes you lose.  While nothing to gripe about (at least it wasn’t raining), it wasn’t spectacular.  But since I was there, I might as well show you what we saw.  First a panorama:

And then a shot of the mountains as the sun set:

All in all it was a mighty fine day!  As Kit’s t-shirt says in the picture above, Life is Good!