Washington vacation with the parents

Last week my parents flew into Washington for a whirlwind vacation with me. We began our trip by heading to Mount Rainier. Our plan was to walk the Paradise trail at the top of the mountain which is supposed to be covered in wild flowers. Sunday morning we drove up...up...up... and what did we find... 10 feet of snow covering all the trails. In JULY! Come on!
So then we drove down...down... down to the trails below the snow line. It was still beautiful to get all the pictures with the big mountain in the background.

 The very top of the mountain stays white all year round due to the glaciers.
Where the Paradise trail should be...

On Sunday we traveled to Mount St Helen's. I have always wanted to see this mountain ever since my grandmother gave me some ash from the eruption as a souvenir when I was really young.
Both of my parents celebrate their birthday in July so I surprised them with a helicopter ride over the crater. It was amazing!! We learned that the mountain is still growing everyday as the pressure continues to build once again.

Our path then led to Astoria... a city on the northern coast of Oregon. Astoria was a cute little coastal town where the Columbia River ends. We walked all the way up the Astoria tower where you can see out over the entire city and we drive out on the docks to check out all the cool sail boats.

 We had such a whirl wind adventure where everyday held a new adventure and a new zip code.
We went to Cape Disappointment and saw a couple of lighthouses and a museum chronicling Lewis and Clark's expedition. We drove on Washington's longest beach. We stayed in a "Yurt" which is a little hut at a campground, and had a fire, made Smore's and played guitar.

On Tuesday, we made it to the Olympic National Park where we saw the Hoh Rainforest and Crescent Lake. Even though it was raining the whole time it was beautiful and it kind of fit the setting anyway.

 As if all that I have already written about was not enough for one vacation we are only half way done :)
Wednesday, we took a ferry over to Victoria with my friend Sue. We walked all over the city and were completely beat by the end of the day!

The following day we took the ferry back and made our way to Port Townsend. We looked around town a little bit that evening, but the main sight seeing was the on Friday when we could not get off the island cause the ferry was full till 1:30pm. We spent the morning window shopping in the downtown area and we stopped for coffee in this totally hip underground coffee shop.

Once we got on the ferry we just relaxed cause we knew once the ferry was done we were off to the Boeing Factory for a tour of the facilities where they build the huge commercial planes. It is the largest commercial building under one roof. Just one of the hanger doors was bigger then a football field! We got to see the new 787's being built and learned all about the new technology going into them. 40 have already been sold to various companies, but they are still waiting on FAA approval so it may be a little while till we can start flying in them. (And they are most likely going to be used for international flights.)
On Saturday and Sunday we spent our time in Redmond and Seattle. I don't have the pics from this part of the week, but my mom already posted them on facebook. We did a wine and beer tour/tasting just a few minutes from my place and Sunday we picked up my sis from the airport, went into Seattle to see Pikes Place Market and the first Starbucks (the highlight of my mom's vacation.) That evening I dropped my parents off at the airport which was sad. But I knew that I had another exciting week ahead of me with Holly traveling down to Vegas. Watch for that post next!  :)