I’ll try to keep this short, with a knitting update tomorrow. I actually didn’t get a whole lot of knitting done on the trip… I guess vacation knitting isn’t really my thing.

Favorite country visited: Canada! The highlight of our trip was spending a day in Victoria, on Vancouver Island. I could have spent a whole week there.

Number of overpriced not-very-nice-actually-kinda-yucky motels we ended up staying at: 2 - one in Gold Beach, OR, and one in Castle Rock, WA. And one of those was after I had turned down an even more scary room in a nearby motel. Yikes.

Worst time to take a drive up the Oregon coast without hotel reservations: Labor day weekend. Hotel rooms are sparse (at least rooms that I’d want to stay in), and the weather was so foggy that we didn’t see one bit of scenic coastline on our drive.

Favorite new-to-me yarn store: The Web-sters, in Ashland, OR. A big thanks to Ms. CG for leaving a comment recommending the store… I would never have known about it otherwise. They have a huge selection of gorgeous yarn and very friendly service too. I got some Diakeito yarn for myself (enough for a hat, and either socks or gloves), and Todd picked out some sock yarn for me to knit him socks.

Places I loved: The beaches of Olympic National Park. I have never seen such a flat, wide beach. Even with the fog, it was amazingly gorgeous.

Victoria.

Seattle - the water, but not the traffic.

Place I hated: The Tillamook Cheese Factory. It might have been better if we hadn’t stopped on a Sunday that was also on a holiday weekend. All the machines were offline, and there were hordes of people in line for cheese samples and ice cream. Very disappointing. We skipped the line for ice cream and headed to the Dairy Queen down the street. Also, didn’t care for Pike’s Place Market. Way too many people, and lots of people selling touristy crap. The fish tossing was amusing, and the flowers sold at the market were gorgeous, but since we were staying at a nearby hotel, we had no need for fish or flowers. Again, disappointing.

Things I enjoyed doing the most: Watching boats and sea planes on Lake Union in Seattle. Visiting friends and family, some of whom I had not yet met. Climbing the sand dunes at Oregon Dunes National Park.

Wandering around downtown Portland, guidebook in hand.

Craziest place we ate: A bowling alley in South Bend, WA - it was surprisingly good food, but slooooow.

Best boutique clothing store: Alley Cat Boutique, in Port Angeles, WA. The best find of the trip was from here… my new Silver jeans. They fit like they are made for me, and cost just slightly more than Gap jeans. These jeans are perfect for curvy figures (large hips/small waist). (not really travel related, but I know how much of a struggle it is to find great jeans when you’re not shaped like a supermodel - hopefully this info is useful to someone.)

Most amazing geologic feature: Mt. St. Helens. Wow.

Things we missed on this trip that give us an excuse to take another vacation sometime soon: The entire Oregon coast, due to fog. Crater Lake. The Ashland Shakespeare festival.

Where I am glad to be right now: Home! As much fun as the trip was, two weeks is a long time to be away.

Did a lot of this: (probably close to 30 miles!)

On trails like this:

Steeper than it looks!

To get to places like this:

Vernal Falls

And this:

Dog Lake

And this:

May Lake

Saw lots of these near our campsite and on trails:

We saw a few bears too, right in our campsite! Yikes!

Finally, did a bit of this:

I’m done with the increase section of the Simple Knitted Bodice. So far, so good! I’ll be trying it on later tonight - hopefully it fits and I can put the sleeves on holders. These 300+ stitch rows are killing me!

Camping was awesome, even if it was a bit hot, dry, dusty, and dirty. We went to the Peninsula campground at Folsom Lake, which is about 10 miles from our house as the crow flies. However, getting to the campground was an adventure in itself. The only way to drive there involves going all the way around the lake, on narrow, curvy, hilly roads. It’s nearly a two hour drive! Thankfully, even though we didn’t make a reservation, there were plenty of sites available when we arrived around 6pm on Friday, and we scored an awesome lakeside site. (From what we could tell, almost every campsite had great views of the lake.)

We got a chance to use our REI Hobitat tent for the first time on this trip. Most. Awesome. Tent. Ever. It has pretty much straight sidewalls, and over 6 feet of headroom inside. Plenty of room for us and the dogs. Our older tent is a backpacking tent, and it is teeny tiny, with barely enough room for both of us to squeeze in. It’s a great tent too, but a bit claustrophobic. The Hobitat will be our tent of choice for car camping from now on!

The dogs did much better than I expected, and spent most of the weekend lying in the dirt next to us. They barked at a few of the people who wandered by our site, and barked whenever one of us would leave the campsite, but that’s about it. They didn’t even bother to wake up at 4am, when a racoon climbed the tree outside our tent, came back down, walked right by us, and dug through our neighbor’s trash. They weren’t exactly the watchdogs that I was expecting them to be!

I managed to find some time to relax and knit a bit too, next to the lake in the cool morning breeze. Who couldn’t relax with views like this?

What am I working on? The stole, of course. I actually made it to the border chart, and the dreaded nupps (which really aren’t that bad). [Ok, ok, so I skipped a few repeats on the middle little flowers section. I was dying. Dyiiiiiing. Could knit no more litttle flowers. And the middle section is long. Looooong. Turns out stitches stretch lengthwise really easily in 100% silk yarn. So, I skipped the last few repeats and started the border. It will be fine. I hope.]

Of course, I couldn’t knit all day, because it got HOT and both the breeze and the shade at our campsite disappeared. So, we got in the boat and hit the lake, sans knitting.

This was also the first time that we’ve taken the dogs on the boat. Mac (below) loved boating, but Newton didn’t care for it quite as much. When the boat was moving, he was not a happy dog!

All in all, a great camping trip. For you Sacramento/NorCal folks, this is a great place to camp, and probably one of the few state parks that doesn’t fill up on the weekends (due to the drive, I’m sure).