We headed west for two weeks of very mellow hiking and camping on the Olympic Peninsula. We got lucky and arrived the day before a very low, low tide. So we found a campground next to some tide pools and woke up 'early' (7am) do some nature nerding. Poking around in tide pools is always a good way to start a trip to the ocean.
This is the same island as above, only the next morning at low tide.
Barnacles, and a lone limpet.
A giant green anemone (
Anthopleura xanthogrammica).
Another giant green anemone, looking a little droopy out of the water, but sporting some cool stripes.
A bloodstar (
Henricia leviuscula).
Bright red, but apparently they don't actually have any blood and use filtered sea water instead.
Hairy chiton (
Mopalia ciliata), looking more leathery than hairy to me.
Another blood star with some purple urchins (
Srongylocentrotus purpuratus).
Orange sea cucumber (
Cucumaria miniata) with with its feeding tentacles out.
And a lovely sun set right from our campsite.
While we were hiking around the Olympic Peninsula we were doing most of our food shopping in the town of Forks, Washington. If you are not a teenage girl, you may not know that Forks was the setting for the Vampire series "Twilight". The town seems to be making the most of this fact. There was a dedicated Twilight store and tour company (see Bella and Edward's houses!), in addition to Twilight paraphernalia in every single other store we entered.
Treaty line between the Vampires and Werewolves. Obviously.
This one was my favourite.
Port Angeles also had Twilight fever ("Eat at the restaurant where Bella and Edward had their first date!"), but luckily the town also had other forms of tourism - like tall ships and a folk fest.
