Seattle,Olympic Peninsula 9/9-19/10

We are on the west coast! We touched the Pacific in beautiful Ruby beach in the Olympic Peninsula and danced a celebration of our coast-to-coast journey. We first arrived in the Seattle area to visit Kule's brother Joel , his wife Karen and their son Gary. We've thoroughly enjoyed our time with them, touring the city, eating great food, and being in the beautiful nature surrounding Seattle, including Snoqualmie Falls and the Washington Lake locks and salmon ladders.

The Pacific Northwest is magical........very wet, but magical! Camping in the rain was a joy in this lush rainforest. Kule got to use his Finnish hand grenade cooker, and we feasted and had an adventure making our way in th dark to a cold bath in the lake over slippery driftwood logs.

This is the land of the Quinault Indian Nation, th land of the giant trees - the Douglas fir, the cedar, the Sitka. We camped next to a sacred Sitka tree, and visited the largest Sitka in the world, a wise 1000 yr. old grandmother tree.

We met the goddess of the giant cedar. Even the fallen trees, laden with moss and bare root, are beautiful homes to the wildlife, including the great gray slug.

Before we left the Peninsula we got to see the salmon jumping in the cascades (see video below) , and we soaked ourselves in the soothing Sol Duc Hotsprings.

The forest was enchanted, and so were we.

We visited two intentional communties on the way to Orcas Island (where we are now visiting our dear friends Ben, Noah, and Samara). One was in Olympia, a funky old town with a great country marketplace full of hand-made goods - I got a wooden bowl made with love by Larry! The co-housing in Olympia called Woodard Lane is shown below; it's new, and in a very nice wooded location in the city (nature is so close to cities here!)  The houses are beautiful, and more expensive than I would have imagined (although not as pricey as Ipswich). We also visited the Port Townsend Ecovillage in another great city spot with organic farmland. The co-founder of that IC, Kees, studied with the co-founder of Earthhaven (Diana Christian). Everyone's learning from each other how to set up the legal structures to code; it's inspiring.
We'll visit more ICs in Washington and Oregon for sure. We could see living in the area, but not ready to make any decisions yet; still got the travel bug!