Ok, so the main reason I’m being timely with this post is because I thought of the title yesterday and have been absolutely giddy with excitement at the mere thought of using it.  Yes, I’m that easily amused by word play.

Anyway, day 2 of our adventure started with the best meal we found within the city limits of Port Angeles at First Street Haven, a tiny little neighborhood breakfast joint that is so small they don’t even have their own bathroom- you have to walk into the boutique next door that sells formalwear to pee.  I am still sad that we didn’t take pictures of the food, because it was freaking delicious- my Roasted Vegetable Scramble with Marscapone Cheese was probably the only evidence of non-grocery store generic cheese within the city limits and my berry bran muffin was a magic mouthful of delicious goodness. (For the record, i go apeshit over a good bran muffin- boring old blueberry muffins just sit there wishing they were awesome bran muffins.  Maybe it’s because they trigger something in my brain because bran muffins were the only kind of muffin we were ever allowed to have in our house growing up- gotta love my mom’s genuis semi-hippie parent logic of “if it has something healthy in the name, it’s gotta be good for you” logic.  We blissfully ignored the fact that the muffins had so much honey in them that they barely stayed together when they were warm while we smeared them with glorious amounts of butter…  ::sigh::)

So um, yeah, now that my bran muffin diatribe is over, I will summarize by saying that breakfast was good.

After eating, we jumped in the car and headed out for the next leg of the adventure- the drive to the Hoh Rainforest.  In case you were wondering why Mike agreed to put up with a trip full of kayaking (he gets seasick), Italian food (he thinks he hates Italian food, but he’s wrong- I’ll write more about that subject some other day) and hiking (he calls walking “inefficient” and thinks it is disrespectful to the inventors of the wheel), it’s because he got to drive.  A lot.  On some very windy roads.  And because I am totally immune to motion sickness (obviously a sign of a higher level of evolution), he can go as fast as he wants while I fall asleep or happily knit.

The road along Lake Crescent is blissfully windy.  Mike called it the best road he may have ever driven on.  I’ll upload some video of his death-defying rally later this week.

We drove 88 miles to the Hoh Rainforest in about an hour and a half- pretty good time considering the windy roads and occasional slow driver in front of us.  We stopped to get some picnic goods at this little “last stop before nature” camping store.  For such a little place, they had a lot of signs.

This was my favorite:

Unfortunately, Mike found a favorite sign too.  Well, he found two:

And he bought them.  Which made me sad:

Seriously not cool.

With peanut butter sandwiches, plenty of water and some Theo’s chocolate bars in hand, we made it to the Hoh and set out for a hike.

I showed off my mad log crossing skills and only almost fell 4 times.

Club moss growing on old trees makes for surroundings that are both eerie and beautiful.

As if I could resist taking one of these pictures again.

We saw these rocks and had to take a picture for my mom.  She loves rocks.

A rare find- a picture of Mike and I where neither of us are holding the camera ourselves.

Mike is very passionate about finding awesome walking sticks and then pretending he’s a ninja.

Awww. Sweaty love.

We covered a total of about 8 miles on the Hoh River trail.  The trail itself actually goes on to the foot of Mt. Olympus, but that is almost 18 miles and we do not have the gear or the stamina for that.  Mike did admit that he kind of liked the hike though, and we even talked about buying backpacking gear.  Because that’s what you do when you do something once and like it- go buy accessories!

The drive and the hike took up most of our day, so dinner consisted of grabbing a quick bite at a local hamburger stand called Frugals.  Mike actually raved about the burger- if you’re ever driving through Port Angeles, try it!  Even though my chicken sandwich was only okay, the meal was redeemed when I popped into Wendy’s down the street to get an iced tea (Frugals only had sweetened Raspberry crap- vomit) and the cashier gave me the drink for free because I had a pretty smile.  Random, and slightly creepy, but I really really love getting stuff for free, even if it is just iced tea.

So in summary- First Street Haven = good, driving fast = good, signs that are blatantly anti-dog=  bad, hiking in the only temperate rainforest in the world = super good, burgers at Frugals = good, free iced tea = bonus.