Monday, July 11, 2011

Quinault Lodge Weekend

A few weekends ago my parents came into town.  We have hit most of the Seattle sights so this trip we decided to get out of the city.  We headed to the Quinault Lodge.

We left town a little later than we would have liked and after stopping over in Olympia for a little dinner we rolled into the lodge at about 11:30pm.  This was a very cool place.  I felt like I had walked onto the set for The Shining.  If I kid on a bigwheel had come around the corner it would have been extra spooky.

This lodge was built in 1926.  Franklin D Roosevelt visited in 1937 and 9 months later signed the bill creating Olympic National Park (inspiration?).  Other than the dining room addition the lodge appeared to be all original.  The fireplaces were huge and had a fire burning in them throughout our visit.  We spent quite a bit of time on the couches in front of the fire visiting and catching up.

This was the rain gauge
showing 13.5 feet for the year
We made one side trip out to the coast.  We stopped at a few roadside areas to check out the "large cedar" as the sign put it.  After a while I picked a random spot overlooking the pacific and we setup our picnic we had brought along.  As we were setting up I noticed a whale rolling along off the coast.  He went back and forth in front of where we were for almost the whole time we there.  About the time the whale show ended a peregrine falcon cruised by very slowly not caring about us at all.  All in all we could not have timed the wildlife any better.

All too quickly Sunday rolled around and we headed back to Seattle.    It was a great weekend and very nice to see my parents.

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