Rattlesnakes, Bears, and Cougars, Oh My!

Headed back into Portland today. Assigned Kevin with finding things to do since I knew I could come back. He came up with Voodoo Donuts and Forest Park. Found Voodoo Donuts without much trouble, Portland isn't a bad city to drive around. Just a lot of one way streets. The parking was pretty cheap too. We got there around 9 and there was a line already. We decided it was worth the wait anyway. The building itself was neat, glittered bricks and a bright pink sign with a neon light Voodoo Donut. Inside was even crazier with tons of color and glass cases with rotating shelves full of crazy donuts. Kevin got a chocolate frosted and old fashioned and I got a toasted coconut. Pretty impressive (though I think Hole in One in Cape Cod was better). Many people came out with multiple boxes of donuts and the line had doubled by the time we got ours. Still decided that even one box would be excessive.

Feels like home

Me: "There really are a lot of bikes here." Kevin: Points to sign...

The famous Voodoo Donut. The bricks were glittered!

The Chinese Garden. Not the Japanese Garden we were actually looking for.

We tried to find the downtown after that, but we completely unsuccessful. Gave up and headed to Forest Park. We couldn't find a real entrance and our GPS was having a hard time finding it at all. After a few wrong turns we eventually found a pull off with a trail head. The circuitous drive was certainly worth it. The trail was beautiful; huge trees and lots of smaller ferns filling the understory. It was hard to believe you were still in the city limits. It actually has 80 miles of trails throughout 5000 acres. No wonder they call Portland the greenest city. It's also the self proclaimed bicycle capital of the world. After a nice walk we figured it wasn't worth going back into the main part of the city to find the downtown. Instead we left Oregon to go check out Olympic National Park in Northwest Washington.

Kevin willingly going back into nature

The trees were so large I couldn't even get an entire one in a single shot.

It was about a 4 hour drive since our gps took us to the very northern most point, rather than the visitor center in the south. Good job gps (and us too for not really checking out the park map). It was a beautiful drive though along the Pacific Coast Highway. Definitely some more small towns, but Im sure they were bigger than 10 people (unlike Emblem, WY).  Olympic was amazing - enormous trees, giant ferns, mountains, and valleys. We camped in the mountain region. There is also a portion of the park that is a temperate rainforest and some areas along the ocean. We had a great campsite (with water) near a river at the base of a valley. Didn't really do much once we got there. Kevin read and I walked along the river. The campsite was not bear proof like Yellowstone, but there were warnings about cougars. I guess each park has there own predators, be it rattlesnakes, bears, or cougars. Not that we encountered any of these luckily.