Random Moments From Washington

I never got around to finishing this post from our trip to Washington last year. These were just some of the random moments I wanted to share that weren't quite enough for an individual blog post. So this is definitely a random assortment of moments from our trip!

My grandparents have always had lots of bird feeders and my grandma has always particularly liked hummingbirds so they have always had several feeders around. This time we were surprised at just how many hummingbirds there were! My grandparents had moved the feeders to a different window and apparently the hummingbirds liked that location better. It was fun to watch them dart around. And apparently they can be aggressive as I saw one use it's beak to grab another one by it's beak and yank it away from the feeder!

The hummingbirds seemed most active in the morning (when the light was the brightest) so it was a little difficult to get pictures with the bright sunlight in the background and the dark shaded foreground. But I'm pleased with the photos I was able to get!

One day while we were in Washington we drove out to Seabrook to walk around the town and then walk down to the beach. It was a beautiful day but was pretty windy and cold out. I always find it a little funny how on the west coast you see tsunami evacuation routes and signs and on the east coast it's always hurricane signs!

My grandpa has a side-by-side and my dad enjoys taking it out for drives in the woods. My mom and dad were out for a ride when my dad came back and said they had spotted a bear! He drove me out and I was able to get a few pictures of it. We've seen plenty of deer over the years but never a bear. My grandpa had only one other time seen a bear in all the years they've lived there so it was interesting to see. I've never seen a bear outside of a zoo. And we were pretty far away so I had to zoom in pretty far and crop the photo a bit so you could actually see it!

One day my grandparents came back from town and this baby goat followed their car home! The neighbors down the road have goats and apparently there was a baby. We went outside to see it and the goat took an immediate liking to my brother for some reason and would just not go home! We tried going back in the house and it would sit on their porch and cry until my brother went back out to pet it! It was funny but it sounded so sad when it would cry! We tried a couple of different times to get it to go home or walk it home and it just kept following them back. Eventually my brother was able to take it back to it's home and get it to stay home.

Making s'more is something we always enjoy doing while we are at my grandparents. I'm really good at cooking my marshmallow perfectly and then at the last second catching it on fire and burning the heck out of it. Either that or just slightly underdone. Haha

The day we drove up to the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival we stopped for lunch at one of our favorite places, Bob's Burgers & Brew. The burgers are just so good and the fries are cooked perfectly. 

And while we were are the Tulip Festival there was this bald eagle circling overhead! It was pretty cool to see!

We also got to see my favorite band, Shinedown, in concert in Everett which was fun! It was the second time we got to see them on this tour. We saw them a few months earlier in Savannah.

We spent the night in Everett after the concert which mean I got to make a stop at my favorite coffee shop, Woods Coffee! I always try to stop if we're in the area I picked up a couple of bags of coffee for myself and also a bag for my brother. Nobody makes coffee like they do in Washington and Wood's vanilla latte is definitely the best. 

And nothing can beat this view when flying out of SeaTac. Except maybe a clear day view of Mount Rainier!

Have you ever visited Washington?

Deception Pass & Rosario Beach

On our last full day in Washington we drove out to Deception Pass. It's easier to just link to the Wikipedia page to explain more about Deception Pass if you're interested.

We had wanted to go out to the beach that we used to go to a lot when I was growing up but my parents couldn't remember exactly where it was. I thought we had to go into the campground to get there and my mom thought we didn't have to go into the campground and thought it was Rosario beach. Meanwhile, my dad didn't remember which place we were supposed to go to either. So we went to Rosario beach and it turns out the campground was right. Anyways, we still enjoyed our time there even if we didn't get to see beach we had intended to see or the ancient Douglas fir tree my siblings and I used to play on.

The weather was beautiful. Warm and sunny. Although much too sunny for taking pictures! I was really disappointed with how my pictures turned out. The sun was so bright and the trees and hills made for some really dark shade so it was really hard trying to get them exposed properly. So basically my phone pictures turned out better than my camera pictures. As much as I hate to say it.

While at Rosario beach we just spent our time wandering around enjoying the nice weather and checking out the tide pools. It had been quite a few years since I've been to a beach with tide pools so it was fun getting to check them out. We saw lots of little crabs, fish, shellfish, kelp, etc. We also saw a sea otter (pictured a few photos below) and an eagle flying overhead. (Which I did not get a picture of.)

Have you ever been to a beach with tide pools?