A Trip to the Pacific Northwest

The month of July was a blur but a happy blur.  

In March, I had ambitiously booked a TWO-WEEK vacation to the Pacific Northwest, so we could see Olympic National Park, Seattle, Portland, and my cousins that moved right outside of Portland.  COVID restrictions were beginning to lift, people were getting vaccinated, and I felt pretty confident, perhaps overly confident, that we could book our fourth national park vacation trip.  (To make up for the previous year, I booked two weeks instead of just one.)

When my mom fell in May, the anticipation of our trip was no longer exciting but worrisome.   Who was going to check on my mom, who was going walk Bruce (our puppy), and who was going to take care of the yard, the pool, and anything else involved with the house?  I spent weeks calling people--family, friends, neighbors, and local businesses--to see if I could put a schedule in place, and while it wasn't perfect, in the end, it all worked out.  Whew!! 

First, my Aunty Irene was a HUGE help because she agreed to come up from Delaware and spend most of our trip at my mom's house.  With her visiting, I no longer had to worry about someone checking on my mom; she went grocery shopping for her, picked up her prescriptions, and helped prepare meals.  She also invited friends and family to come visit, so they both actually had a fun time seeing people that they hadn't seen since COVID!!

Other people helped out, too.  One of my mom's friends offered to visit her on a day when my aunt was still in Delaware.  A friend of mine offered to care for the pool while I was gone (in exchange for using it).   I also had neighbors and local businesses on standby to assist with anything from puppy daycare to mowing the lawn.  Again, it wasn't a perfect plan, but it made it possible for us to enjoy our two-week vacation.  The worries were still there, but they were minimized, for-sure.

Once everything was in place, on July 18th, we were off to catch a 5 a.m. flight from Hartford, CT to Chicago, IL and then another to Portland, OR.   Once the plane landed in OR, we had another 3 hour car drive to our first location--Lake Quinault Lodge in Olympic National Park, WA.  

My dream to visit the Pacific Northwest had officially begun, and boy was it AMAZING!  I made a promise to myself to record everything about the trip, and so I will be spending my next nine posts doing just that.  If you have an interest in visiting the Pacific Northwest like me, please stay tuned for the following posts:

• Olympic National Park: Lake Quinault Lodge, Rainforest, & the Tallest Sitka Spruce Tree
• Olympic National Park: The Hoh Rainforest and Rialto Beach 
• Olympic National Park: Sol Duc Falls, Hot Springs, and Marymere Falls
• Olympic National Park: Port Angeles and Hurricane Ridge
• Seattle: A City with Rich History and Innovation
• Oregon: The Sunriver Resort
• Oregon: The High Desert Museum
• Oregon: The Lava River Cave near Bend
• Oregon: Staying 'Weird' with Our Cousins in Portland

And, if you have no interest in the Pacific Northwest but just want to hear about some crazy adventures, we have that too.  What's a family vacation without a little drama like a missing passport, a lost cell phone (in a river, of course), and a high energy mouse?

The trip that almost never happened is a trip to be remembered in more ways than one.