During the boys' spring break we took a trip out to the Washington coast for the first time during our eight years in the state. Skirting around the south side of washed-out Mt. Rainier, we took US 12 most of the way. There was a bridge detour that took us around through the impressively-named small town of Cosmopolis into Aberdeen, where we discovered a Star Wars Shop (alas, it was closed) that the boys and Mom spent some time looking in the window of.
We spent a couple of days with friends in the town of Ocean Shores and looked for agates but mostly got shells, as well as walked on the beach in the rain to see an old wreck. Next was a drive on US 101 around the Olympic National Park. We stopped at Quinault Lake and walked around the trees, including "The World's Largest Sitka Spruce". They had informed us that the center at the Hoh Rainforest was inaccessible due to a road closure, so we skipped that and drove through the trees to Port Angeles, where we met some friends from Anacortes who took the ferry over. Because Hurricane Ridge was not open the next day (only selected days at that time of year), both families took a drive to Dungeness Spit and then a ferry ride to Whidbey Island, where we drove over to Anacortes for a couple of nights. On the way back, we stopped for lunch in Bellevue, and only stopped once more at Snoqualmie Pass to play in the snow, which was already getting too soft to slide on but fine to build with.
It was a couple of weeks to the first day of summer, but it was the last day of school. We got ourselves ready to take a driving trip south, hoping to leave early enough that we could go at least 5 hours Friday afternoon so that Saturday would not be as difficult a driving day. With that in mind, we decided to drive through Bend and kept going until we reached Chemult, an hour further south on US-97, staying at the Dawson House Lodge. We spent a few days visiting relatives, including Sunday at Winnie's old church in San Francisco. We also finally got to see the new garage almost complete at our El Cerrito house after years of planning, as well as some of the demolition (by hand) of the old one.
On the way back north, we stopped at Turtle Bay Exploration Park in Redding, whose Sundial Bridge had not been there the last time we had visited. Next was Ashland, OR. We weren’t able to get tickets to a Shakespeare play but we did get another use of the ASTC pass at the Science Works children’s museum. Because school there was still in session, we had an opportunity to pretty much have the place to ourselves. Both boys liked setting up dominoes to knock down, and Andrew played on the pinball machine, which was supposed to demonstrate the difference in stimulation when it had sound on or off.

After Crater Lake and an overnight stay in Bend, we took a detour to the John Day Fossil Beds on the way back. One of the most striking things was the contrast between the truck-filled US-97 and the back-country highways, where we often would see no other moving vehicle in any direction.

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