First day of school

 

I almost forgot to get his new shoes in a pic!

Raining and foggy! 

Summer of 120 miles

 

She finished her goal with two days to spare!

Lower Lewis River Falls

 

My favorite day of the trip was the last day! After Ape Cave, we drove another hour to this waterfall and swimming hole. There was a solid rock shelf that spanned almost the entire width of the river and was only about a foot deep. You could just sit in the middle of the river and watch the waterfall. Past the rock shelf the river was super deep and some people were cliff jumping off the top of the falls. The rock was crazy slick though, anywhere there wasn’t plants growing on it, which was interesting. It was plenty hot for swimming in the super cold river.

Ape Cave

After a headlamp malfunction at the very start and a trip back to the trailhead store, we were on our way.

Pictures in complete dark don’t turn out well.

Ape Cave is a 1.5 mile lava tube created by Mt St Helens a couple thousand years ago. It took 1.5 hours to make it back to daylight! It was mostly scrambling over boulders with some easier walking through large caverns. There were only a couple places where you had to duck or squeeze, but mostly the cave was high ceilings. We were all glad we had gloves for the climbing and scrambling. We only saw two other people the entire time, and they had turned around and headed back to the entrance pretty quickly into their hike. There is an easier lower cave that is where most of the tourists go apparently. It was pretty cool being in there all by ourselves!

There were some crazy rocks and the ceiling sparkled almost the whole way.

This wall was the most difficult part, with only one or two foot and hand holds, but everyone made it on their own for the most part.

After about 1.25 miles, there was a skylight, the first light of the whole hike!

The end had another skylight and a ladder to get out the exit. Climbing the ladder, you could feel the heat instantly after being in 40 degrees the whole length of the cave.

 

Seattle

We walked the Seattle bay front.

The next morning we went up the Space needle, and even got to see the revolving glass floor!

 

Astoria

 

We climbed the Astoria Column, all 164 stairs of it.

The next morning we went to the Astoria Maritime Museum and went inside the lightship Columbia.