Keeping up with the Bragassas: From One "Port" to the other "Port"

Day 3 - Sunday, August 14
Portland, OR to Port Angeles, WA

I don't think that I've really mentioned this before, but...the road trip is a little bit out of the ordinary for me. Usually, I have everything planned out before hand so I know exactly where we are going, when we're going to get there, how long it will take us to drive, yada yada yada. Well this time, planning went out the window and we're just kinda flying by the seat of our pants and it's driving me CRAZY! I hate not really knowing where I'm going to stay that night especially since we are limited in our options as not everywhere takes dogs. Either way, I tried to get over my Type A personality and just go with it...as hard as that was.

On Sunday morning, we woke up and decided that we would take an urban hike through Portland. Apparently, there are some really nice trails that give you good views of the city and of Mt. Hood. Unfortunately, we were not lucky enough to find these so called urban trails, as our GPS was a little bit on the fritz and because of some road work. Needless to say, we drove around parts of the city for about an hour before we decided to call it quits and head out. Oh, where were you going, you ask? We didn't really know...

So far, the first half hour in the car each day has consisted of me draining the battery on Brian's iphone to frantically figure out where we should go. After we figure that out, I'm stuck the the daunting task of finding a hotel in that city that accepts dogs...which so far has not been too hard. As you guessed, once we left Portland, the next half hour or so I was occupied planning the rest of our day. Since I was deemed the master planner, I decided that we were in it for the long haul, and we were going to to to Port Angeles...a city at the very tip of the Olympic Peninsula across the water from Canada...and instead of taking the boring interstate, I decided that we needed to take the scenic, ocean view highway. You see, when I was little, my family took a trip up to Washington state and I absolutely loved the pacific coast...which meant that Brian obviously had to experience what I did...no matter how long it made the car trip.

Honestly, it was kind of a long drive...but it was beautiful! The Olympic Peninsula is gorgeous and we definitely want to go back and spend some time there! It's home to the only rainforest in the continental U.S. It's not a tropical rainforest, but a temperate rainforest which means that the foliage and animals are completely different than what you think of in a typical rainforest. Unfortunately, we did not actually go into the rainforest since Vida was with us, but we were able to visit the Olympic National Park beaches, which were awesome!!

Being patriotic:)

She loves sticking her head out the window!

Ruby Beach, Olympic National Park

Me and my fur child taking a walk on the beach...

There were tons of starfish stuck to the rocks! It was so neat!

Playing tug-of-war

We would see these signs every so many miles where loggers had harvested forests...it tells you when it was harvested, when the forest was replanted, and when it will be harvested again.