Olympia, Washington - June 21st to 24th

We’d been told by a friend of ours in Australia that we MUST go and stay with Derek & Sara in Olympia, south of Seattle – so we’re very glad we took that recommendation! (Thanks Lachlan!)

After staying up near Seattle for another night, we had a very slow day just struggling to get out of bed, and buying a few more things at Walmart for the van, and then sat in the scary city traffic for quite a while on our way south – should have probably thought about what day and time it was (Friday afternoon), and maybe left a bit earlier! Up to this point at least, we discovered that America is truly the land of highways – massive multi-lane (and sometimes multi-level) roads with up to 7 lanes in each direction! So although the photo below was probably taken somewhere else in Washington State, we definitely spent our fair share of time (at least!) in the slow direction!

When we arrived (much later than expected!) at Derek & Sara’s place in Olympia, we headed out to dinner at a nearby restaurant via cruise bike – awesome! They have an awesome collection of stretched out cruiser bikes, including one tandem bike, and also an electric bike each (would be SO good for riding to and from work, ad everywhere else like these two do!), as well as mountain bikes – not to mention lots of long boards for skating!

So on the way back from dinner, after catching a close of view of a massive bald eagle taking off (!!) we stopped at a soon to be subdivision and tried out the long boards, it was lots of fun! (I even managed to go along myself for a bit, which is a pretty big achievement considering my level of coordination! Lawrie on the other hand was fantastic already…)

Bonzai Boarding - SO much fun!!

The next morning we got up early (ish) to enjoy the serenity of canoeing on the nearby lake – although people live all around the lake, motorboats aren’t really used, and there was a beautiful mist all over the lake when we started out – very peaceful!

  

Then after a delicious breakfast cooked by Sara (thanks again!!) we headed off to Capitol Hill to do some mountain biking with Derek & Sara – had a great time on one of the single trail tracks there, and even saw Mt Rainier and Mt St Helens in the distance from the top!

We had a little more of a lazy afternoon after that, and after dinner we had a game of rounders with the neighbourhood kids – they were thinking of waiting until the next day for this, but there was a group of kids waiting outside! So we enjoyed that for an hour or two, then rode the cruiser bikes to Baskin Robbins (with a few of the kids and a couple of the parents) to enjoy an ice cream!

Water break...

The next day after the morning meeting at the Olympia Convention grounds, we headed to nearby State Park to wander among the pines and near another lake, then headed to the Farmers Markets in town to enjoy some delicious greek Gyros for lunch. We also got some delicious cupcakes and checked out a few other parks around Olympia, although I’m not too sure of their names – but they were SO green and beautiful, and just different to at home!! The last one we went to was the Tumwater Falls park area, where there’s a salmon ladder too, which was quite cool, although no salmon to be seen there or in the nearby hatchery at this time of year.

We amused Derek & Sara with some classic Aussie country songs too, relaxed in their hammock inside, and all in all had a fantastic weekend with some new friends, who we hope to catch up with again not too far down the track!