Days 17-25: Washington, Oregon, and Norcal

After leaving Montana we drove a marathon day to the Olympic Peninsula. From there we camped and backpacked into a coastal rain forest, which has the highest concentration of living mass per area in the world! The beach had piles and piles of trees spanning miles in each direction that fall in the rain forest and are carried by rivers to the ocean. The forest literally is green in every place that you look. Every single surface is covered by mosses and other plants, and when a tree falls over, it becomes a "nurse log" because several other trees will spring out of it along with other vines and shrubs. We camped by a little creek and could hear the caribou making their trumpet-like mooing to one another. And amazingly, although it rains over one hundred inches every year there, we had beautiful weather and didn't even get rained on once!

In Seattle, we stayed with a good friend who made excellent recommendations of what to see and do in the city. We hung out at Pike's place market, got excellent seafood lunch by the water, went to fun coffee shops and bookstores, and got a tour of the "chic" area of downtown while we checked out the evening bar scene. In Portland we saw Multnomah Falls before exploring the rose gardens and having lunch at a McMenamin's- a chain of brewpubs all over Oregon that convert high-character old buildings like schools and theaters into fun downtown hangouts.

From Portland, we drove to Astoria, then down the Oregon coast and inland again to Eugene, where we stopped through a friend's hometown of Drain. On the way we saw the Tillamook Cheese Factory and stopped at hug point. We continued south into California where we camped a night to explore the Lost Coast, the only area of California coastline too rural and rugged for highway access. Notice how our footsteps are the only ones in the black sand. Our last, long day was spent in northern California tasting at breweries and finally getting back to Danville. We got pint glasses at almost all of the breweries we visited, and so here is a picture of our final collection.