Washington & Idaho

In an effort to continue beating the heat of summer, we continued northward.

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Mount Rainier National Park

Grove of the Patriarchs

First stop in Washington was Mount Rainier National Park. We hiked the 1.2-mile Grove of Patriarchs Trail. This trail is filled with trees that are more than a thousand years old.

Silver Falls

Also in Mount Rainier National Park, we took a short 0.6-mile walk to the Silver Falls.

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Sometimes finding a boondocking spot is stressful, especially on weekends which are always busier. After lots of looking, we found a great little spot which had a “downstairs” right next to a small stream.

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Hoh Rain Forest

Hall of Mosses

Hoh Rain Forest is a temperate, or cool-weather, rainforest located in western Washington state. It is filled with conifers over 200 feet tall, moss, lichen, and ferns.

The Hall of Mosses is lush and green everywhere you look.

There were millions of clovers covering the ground, intertwined with the ferns. Sean and I looked but couldn’t find a four-leafed clover among them.

Spruce Nature Trail

The Spruce Nature Trail is also in the Hoh Rain Forest.

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Madison Falls Trail

Only 0.2-mi round-trip near Port Angeles, WA, the Madison Falls Trail holds the record for our shortest hike to-date.

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Freshwater Bay

Freshwater Bay is fed freshwater from the Elwha River into the Salish Sea.

We saw lots of wildlife in the bay, starting with some geese perched on a rock, mocking the dogs from afar.

Bruno sometimes sits nicely at the front of the kayak, but he often wants to climb on my lap. As you can imagine, it’s not super easy to paddle with a 50lb basset on your lap…

Bruno and I also wandered up onto a little cove for a potty break to discover it was covered in billions of blue and white mussel shells.

Later we developed a theory for who may have left all of the empty mussel shells ashore… a little river otter!

The photos/video of this guy leave something to be desired because, as our Seaworld friend has informed us, otters are cute, tiny assholes, so we didn’t want to get too close.

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Woodinville

Most people might not have Woodinville at the top of their travel list, but it happens to be home to the annual basset hound parade! Woodinville is just outside of Seattle.

While the 2020 parade was cancelled, there are still plenty of long-eared, short-legged sights to see. (It’s also a great place for wine in case you aren’t as obsessed with basset hounds as me.)

There are three basset hound statues [and counting] in the city. We were able to find two of them.

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Seattle Space Needle

Of course, we had to see the Space Needle while we were in Seattle.

At Kerry Park, you can see the Space Needle, the Seattle skyline, and Mount Rainier to its right.

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If you didn’t see the last one, here’s another video of how excited Bruno gets before every hike. He just can’t contain himself.

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Deception Pass State Park

North of Seattle is the little bayside town of La Conner. While staying there, we sought to find more marine life in Puget Sound.

We started with Lighthouse Point Trail & Rosario Head Trail at Deception Pass State Park.

Not pictured, but we did see some porpoises off shore!

There are really beautiful black sand beaches at Deception Pass.

We stopped to eat lunch on the side of a cliff. Bruno decided to take a little nap while we ate.

Finally, we drove to a spot near a naval base for some whale watching, but alas Free Willy eluded us.

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Whale Watching

The Puget Sound is home to both resident and transient pods of whales. While in the area, we couldn’t pass up a whale watching tour.

While you aren’t guaranteed to see whales, we figured it was a good omen when a harbor seal greeted us at the docks on our way to the boat.

Lucky for us, we did spot a pod of orcas: two mature males – T046D (Strider) and T046E (Thor), born in 2000 and 2003 respectively; their mother T046 (Wake), and her youngest calf T046F (Loki), born in 2012. The males can have dorsal fins 6 to 7 feet tall. Females have dorsal fins that reach 2 to 3 feet and are curved.

We also saw a grey whale which was busy hunting and kept much closer to the shore. It would occasionally spew great big geysers from its blowhole, which our boat operator was delighted to inform us is composed almost entirely of snot. He said to tell our friends, so now you know: it’s snot.

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While in Seattle we felt it only right to try some oysters. Why anyone likes oysters is beyond me. I imagine it tastes quite similar to what comes out of a whale’s blowhole. Blech.

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Coeur D’Alene

We then traveled west to pick up our first ever tiny home visitor! Our friend John, whom Sean has known since kindergarten, flew all the way up north to spend some time with us in the great outdoors.

Our first stop during his visit: Lake Coeur D’Alene in Idaho.

Our inflatable kayaks are actually doubles, so John got to paddle with Lexi and Sean & I shared the second kayak with Bruno.

Coeur D’Alene is a town in northern Idaho most known for its beautiful lake. Coeur D’Alene is French and translates to “heart of an awl,” a term used by Canadian fur traders.

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Tubbs Hill

We hiked the 2-mile Tubbs Hill Trail which wraps around Lake Coeur D’Alene.

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Spokane Falls [Trail]

Sadly it eventually came time to return John to the airport in Spokane, WA. While we were there, we decided to make one last stop before saying goodbye to Washington too.

There is technically a trail around Spokane Falls and through nearby Riverfront Park, but most of it was under construction so we just sort of wandered around the area.

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After that, we left both Washington and Idaho behind and found a nice boondocking spot in Kootenai National Forest in Montana.

Next stop: Kootenai Falls and Glacier National Park