Leaving
Okay, so I showed the great pics of our packed van. We took off, getting gas, last minute drinks, last minute pit stops. An hour after pulling away from the house, we were actually on I-90. This is how family vacations go, right? 
About half an hour or so down the road, we lose a few things from the car top. Totally unexpected. (To everyone,else, anyway.) We do have a top to our car top, but it wasn’t thought enough would fit, so we used a tarp. Something people have been doing for how long? Since they were invented, right? And sheets before that? I know, so cheap. Yes, I am.
Well, we find the lost chair, tighten the straps and our oldest decides to use zip ties to tighten the edges. Of course, my dh, in a very manly way, decries the ridiculousness of this idea. (Which he later reversed. Was he humble about it? I’ll have to ask. ) Men.
But how much can be said when our then wise daughter starts playing with a zip tie and gets it stuck around her wrist. I have the cutest pic I won’t post of her trying to chew it off. (She did eventually get free, but heck, who thought hours in a van would be boring?)
Ahh, so we were off, across WA and heading to Forks, home of Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight, New Moon, and Eclipse just days before the release of Breaking Dawn. On the way:
Yes, we love taking landscape pictures. And with such a lovely place, why wouldn’t we indulge? So, we make it all the way west, spend hours in traffic between Tacoma and Olympia. Seriously, half our driving day was spent going about 30 miles. Ugh. But, we survived. We made it through.
To the Olympic National Forest…
and it’s enormous trees…
and nearly as big slugs…
but then we were there…
the coast and the most beautiful sunset we never saw again…
We were too late to find a campsite, so we drove into Forks. And that’s another blog.
