Travel Snapshot: Day 71 - Day 78

During this stretch we breathed in the salt air on the Oregon coast, sampled the local brews, visited friends in Portland and Bend, Oregon, and wandered around Temple Square in Salt Lake City, just waiting to be exposed for the secular liberal elites that we are.

I'm a sucker for the weathered, nautical look of fishing towns:


A bevy of male sea lions make Newport, Oregon their home for the winter, while their female brethren winter in warmer climes off the California coast:


These suckers may move like ballerinas when they're in water, but they are some ugly, awkward-looking mofos when they're on land:


A few days later, J-P had his new old Mariners' hat co-opted while we were in Portland. But who cares when the kid's got a mug this cute?


We toured the Deschutes Brewery in Bend, where the guide was just a touch too excited about brewing beer, but the Black Butte was delicious:


Finally, we toured around Temple Square at night, where the Christmas lights and Jesus-loving were in full effect:


The little paper-bag luminaria with words in different languages were my favorite. I'm easy to impress.


Best of all was finding one bag with the word "light" in Armenian, which J-P was a able to pick out of the crowd in a heartbeat:


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Travel Snapshot: Day 68 - Day 70

After camping in near-freezing temperatures in the heart of the Olympic National Park, we made our way to the thin strip of parkland along the coast, where the temperatures were much more mild. We hiked to see some crazy rock formations, and some wicked cool marine life in the tidal pools.

At high tide, all of this would be undewater:


Anemone!


Notice the reddish starfish right at the pool's edge in the foreground:


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Travel Snapshot: Day 63 - Day 67

We celebrated J-P's birthday at a dive bar within stumbling distance of our friends' house in Seattle. As it turns out, there was karaoke.


Which was the beginning of the end.


Here are J and L, singing and dancing to a song that is, without a doubt, their signature karaoke jam. If I recall correctly, that jam was none other than Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up."


We spent the rest of our time in Seattle visiting friends, including L and pudgy little A:


As for the sights, we did get this glimpse of the Space Needle as we waved goodbye to M and E one evening:


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Travel Snapshot: Day 58 - Day 62

So, as it turns out, I don't have pictures for every single day in the last month of travel. BAD TRAVEL BLOGGER. But instead, I'm prepared to offer you extra pictures for some of our days so that your total picture quantity remains constant. So don't say I never did nothing for you.

We spent Days 58 through 62 in lovely British Columbia, our would-be destination if we ever decide to leave the U.S. for cooler northern climes. We squeezed in a ton in just a few days, visiting family and friends, eating very well, and enjoying our first ski day of the season up at Whistler, which finally breaks my streak of bad luck when it comes to skiing weather at Whistler.


We were able to ski both mountains thanks to the new Peak to Peak lift, and enjoyed the views on the ride across (although we spent much of the twenty-minute ride deflecting the unwelcome attentions of a particularly aggressive member of some kind of evangelical cult).


After a few days in Vancouver and its environs, we hopped the ferry to Victoria. We spent the day and evening wandering downtown and enjoying the glowing lights on the provincial government buildings.


After a lovely dinner with J-P's cousin G, we got a close up of those lights


and, finally, enjoyed a nightcap at the lounge in the very posh Empress Hotel. Amazing they let riff raff like us just wander in there.


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