Pacific Northwest (part 2)

Greetings from Illinois!


I just got a new role within my company and I have 2 straight weeks of training in Bourbonnais, IL that started yesterday. I haven't done much exploring because I'm busy 12 hours a day but this weekend I plan to go on an adventure or 2.
Stay tuned for a potential post about that!


__________________



So. Where was I.

When we left our cozy mountain cottage in Port Angeles, WA we made our way West towards the beach. It was a short 1.5 hour drive through lakes, mountains, and moss covered forests.

We stayed in another cozy cabin at a campground this time in none other than the infamous Forks, WA.
You know what that means....

Yep. The tiny town Stephenie Meyer based her Twilight series off of...and boy do they take full advantage of it. Those treaty line signs were right at our campground!


Which was also next door to....

Jacob Black's house! They even had his motorcycle parked by the mailbox. You can actually RENT this home as a vacation rental...pretty neat for you Twilight fans ;-)

I like Twilight - I think it's a really neat sci-fi story. But I'm not a die hard fan like some of the people that visit this town. It's a very, veerrrrryy small town. I believe they were on the verge of bankruptcy pre-twilight days. But now? They are doing well thanks to the flock of tourists who come to see Bella's stomping ground

After we checked out downtown Forks we finally made our way to Second Beach in La Push.
To get there you have to park near the road then walk about 2 miles through the woods...

The hike is a little on the strenuous side with many hills, but once you finally reach the beach.......

Heaven. Just pure bliss. As soon as we saw the ocean peak through the trees, we ran down the hill then stopped on the sand and just looked around, silently, with our mouths wide open.

We looked at each other.
Looked back at the beach.
Kicked off our shoes & threw them on some drift wood
Then ran.

At the snap of a finger we turned into two little kids in a candy store.
It was like seeing the ocean for the first time all over again.
The same rush I got when Mitch & I were in elementary school and sat next to each other on the bus on the way to a circus ;-)

There weren't many people on the beach so we practically had the place to ourselves. As you can see there also wasn't a cloud in the sky so I was anxious to catch the sunset here.
After a few thousand pictures and deep breaths of fresh, salty air we finally cleaned off our sandy feet and headed back to town to grab some dinner.


As the sun started to set we packed up our camera equipment, bundled up, and marched through the now dark woods back to Second Beach for the big sunset finale.

And boy, did it deliver.

I think I walked around this beach with that grin on my face all evening. Didn't speak much, just walked and smiled. I can truly say I was happy inside out. Sheer joy. Pure bliss.


Our moment of meditation was soon interrupted by reality; the sun was setting, the trail through the woods back to the car were nearly black, and we had no flashlights.
Oops.

So we grabbed our stuff and headed for the trail. But right before we entered the trail head, I stopped and turned around to take one last glance. Soak up one last moment of peace...
The intense orange color lighting up the sky. The smell of the Pacific Ocean. The sound of the waves rolling back to sea with the tide....

I totally bottled up this moment in my mind & in my heart. In this moment, life was so, so good.
Here I am, 25 & feelin' alive... in the Pacific Northwest, watching a sunset over a quiet beach on an Indian Reservation!! Seeing nothing but a colorful sunset in a place that is usually pure fog and rain.
I have a happy, healthy family.
I'm healthy and have a job that allows me to afford  food, shelter and travel.
Get this, I even have a husband that accepts me for who I am AND embraces my need for adventure..
So this is what winning the lottery feels like.

_____________________



We woke up to sunny blue skies again on our final day in the Pacific Northwest. We headed down to the Quileute Indian Reservation to grab some coffee from the locals and enjoy it on the quiet beach.

In this moment I had freshly washed hair that was still wet, enjoying an all natural blow dry from the ocean breeze. I had fresh hot coffee in my hands, the most handsome man next to me enjoying the view, and life was so good, yet again.
It's becoming apparent that the older I get the more & more I appreciate the little things.
I love it.

After our moment of caffeine enriched solitude, we hopped in the car and made our way South, eventually making our way back to Seattle to catch our early morning flight the following day.

Along the way we stopped at a place called Ruby Beach - A beach that a Canadian couple we ran into had recommended to us. Just as they promised, it was nothing short of a scene from a movie...

You know I pondered something while we were slowly exploring this beach. We were the youngest ones there by at least a few decades. Why don't other 20 somethings want to get out and explore natural beauty like this? Maybe they come in the evening. Maybe they would rather be in the city?
Maybe me & Mitch are just two old souls....

.... who would rather stack rocks than stack beers.


The rest of the day was spent driving around the quiet countryside and enjoying each others presence in a place just last year we could never imagine visiting. If September, 2013 you would have told me I would be driving the Olympic Peninsula next year, I would have looked at you and let out the biggest HA!!! Yeah right!
Ha, and if you were to tell me Hey Steph, this time next year you will have a new job that is going to send you to Illinois for two weeks of training!
My eyes would bulge and I would have spit my water out.

Makes me wonder what I will be doing this time next year...where...and with who. You know?
Maybe I'll be on an African safari? Maybe I'll own a house? Maybe I'll live in California?
You just never know.
When I have bad days I'll remind myself of this; nothing lasts forever.
Not good times,
Not bad times.

So that's the lesson I went home with.
In life you'll have times where it feels like your world is completely crashing down. Everything that can go wrong, goes wrong. But I can promise you from experience, it will get better and it won't last forever.
Nothing does.

This goes for good times too. Times where you're so damn happy you want to just freeze time and live in that moment forever. But it won't last, as a matter of fact it will fly by so fast you will feel like it was all a dream.
So when you're having a 'happy time'...like watching a gorgeous sunset or enjoying coffee with your best friend...enjoy it. Take a deep breath, really capture that moment in your mind, because nothing lasts forever and soon it will be a distant memory....