While leaving my Aunt and Uncle’s house, my cousin’s husband noticed a drip under the truck. Since I had already intended to get an oil change, I decided to get the truck looked at as soon as I could. I had already struck out at Walmart for a quick oil change the day before. Since I had more going on than just a standard service, I got a recommendation for a great mechanic in Port Angeles and he had availability that afternoon, so I set up an appointment.

Being only a couple hours from our campsite at Crescent Beach, we arrived there as early as was possible to check in. The place was breathtaking. Stretching across the vista in front of our camper was an extensive private beachfront on the Strait of Juan de Fuca. We could very clearly see Vancouver Island, and – in fact – we were so close that we picked up Canadian cell service. Behind the site were the Olympic Mountains, which were visible from the beach when the cloud cover lifted.

After the family got settled into our campsite, and Matthew and I took a walk on the beach, I took off to grab groceries. One of the people at the campsite told me there was a little store up the street called Joyce General Store that had basics and I was fine with that. Little did I know it was the most quaint general store I would see on our trip. It was like stepping back in time. I picked up a couple of “special” treats for Chris there – because I love him so.

After dropping off the groceries, I took the truck up to Port Angeles to be looked at. It turns out there was just a lot of air conditioning condensation dripping, but the mechanic found the sway bar was broken and fixed it. Plus we got an oil change. The view from the town wasn’t too shabby either. All in all, it was a great afternoon. Unfortunately, when I got back I discovered Izzy had gotten my form of the cold and was feeling miserable. While I made a soup dinner for her and the familiy, the boys played beach volleyball on the campground’s court. I took a walk on the beach as the food cookded. That evening, we sat around the campfire to get warm. (Did I mention it was considerably colder here than anywhere we’d been so far?)

The next day, we forewent driving up the mountains of Olympic National Park. Izzy was stuffed up and I didn’t want her ears to hurt with the altitude change. Besides, we’d been to mountains already and would see more later in the trip. So, we headed in the direction of the Olympic National Forest’s lower trails into the rainforest. In order to get to these trails we had to go through Forks – where Bella meets Edward in the infamous Twilight series of books. We stopped, ate some really yummy Italian food, and let Chris do some work in the car outside of the library in Forks. Verizon cell phone reception was not great in the area, so he needed the steady WiFi. Izzy sat in the car and rested, while Matthew and I went into some shops and then the hardware store. I had to get a dish drying rack that fit a small trailer, extra large ziploc bags to hold the sewer line when we stow it since the first one fell apart, and 3M hooks to help keep towels off the floor. By this point, I was growing a bit obsessed with using Command hooks to solve trailer life mess-related issues.

More than one shop in Forks featured movie and book merch, plus there is also a museum dedicated to Twilight (which had a line out the door). Interestingly, the movie wasn’t even filmed in Forks. While movie/book tourists are a new economy, the mainstay of the area is – apparenty, according to the sign below – logging.

After lunch in Forks we drove to the Hoh Rain Forest in Olympic National Park. Although there were loads of warnings that we would encounter delays due to road work coming into the park, we must have hit the flaggers at all the right times. Windows rolled down and listening to 90s hip hop on Spotify, we soaked in the cool air and smells of the forest.

When we reached the visitor’s center, we found packed parking lots. However, turnover for spots was high in the late afternoon, and we found one right near the trailheads easily. As a family, we took the Spruce Nature Trail, which had a variety of sights: old growth and new growth trees, Hoh River views, and bridges over streams. We did not run into the bad-tempered elk that we were warned against at the trailhead, but we did find a banana slug, which was a little gross. It was a shame that we arrived after a long dry spell because a lot of undergrowth and mosses were brown and wilted. That didn’t diminish how verdant the whole forest was, with moss hanging from branches, green plants carpeting the ground, and leaves sprouting from every level of the canopy. At the end of the trail, I took Izzy to rest in the truck while Chris and Matthew hiked the Hall of Mosses Trail.