A Moment a Day...

a photo blog by Brandy Young

You are currently browsing the archives for May, 2010.

Day 3…5/23/2010…Big Cedar Tree…

We finally made it to the next day! Saturday was a LONG day! When we got back to the motel we both crashed!
So Sunday we headed south…towards Aberdeen. Our first stop was the Big Cedar Tree…really it is on the map just like that. We start to see signs saying Big Cedar Tree Duncan’s Memorial. So we turn off where it says to…and we drive…and drive…just before a fork in the road a post “Big Cedar Tree” with a curved arrow to the right…driving…driving…another post with an arrow curving to the right. The car in front of us turns around and goes back…driving…driving…another post turn right…
I think at the third one Chaz started making jokes about this all just being a scam to get people out in the woods alone. We could hear the banjo’s from Deliverance playing in our heads…LOL!
I think in total there were 5 or 6 posts saying to “go right”. And then there it was…the BIG CEDAR TREE!

It was definitely really cool and the biggest tree I have ever stood next to…well maybe. Anyway…really all it is a big dead stump with stuff growing on it. But it’s still cool because it is SO BIG!

You see Charlie the ant there…(oh and yes when I refer to Charlie and Chaz…he is the same person. Just so you know…)  ;)

In the scrubbed off area it reads…
“THIS TREE WOULD NOT BE DYING IF ITS NEIGHBORS WERE NOT LOGGED.
TREES DO NOT STAND ALONE.”

And this concludes our almost near Deliverance experience in the woods of the Olympic National Forest…

1 comment

Day 2…5/22/2010…Second Beach…

Better known as the Beach that tried to kill me…there was no signage stating how far the hike to the beach was…so we had no idea going in what we were looking at. And it wasn’t the distance really that was hard…it was the climb out…
According to the National Park Service website it’s a .7 mile hike…with and 80 foot gain and a 100 foot loss. A loss that had to be GAINED in nice stairs back and forth up the side of the mountain…I knew going down that the climb back up was going to be utter HELL! But we had already gotten that far so I wasn’t turning back! That site also says it is an EASY trail…gah…EASY killed me. YEAH RIGHT!!!

But even with all that it was a beautiful beach as well! Only two other couples down there when we were there. So that made it even better!

As we were walking around the beach Chaz said you messed up your heart… ??? What do you mean? You put C + B…not E + B… huh… You are Charlie right? ROFL… Oh he said…well we are here on this whole Twilight thing I thought you were doing Edward + Bella! HAHAHA!!

Here’s your nasty seaweed stuff Lori… ;)

Add a comment

Day 2…5/22/2010…La Push, WA…First Beach…

Yes…we are still on day two…Chaz tried to kill me off I tell you! ;)
After we took our whirlwind tour of Forks, we headed out to La Push to get some dinner.

Good thing we aren’t Vampires!

We ate at the River’s Edge…the burger was great…the service was lacking…
The view from the restaurant was pretty cool…except one thing…you get the picture…lol

While we sat and ate…and waited for our waitress…we saw lots of seagulls… a few Eagles! Dang my crappy lens and inability to get good pics!! And we also saw several Sea Lions. No pics of those because by the time our waitress finally brought us our check and then had to fix it because she charged us for double the drinks…they were gone.

First Beach was…I am really getting tired of my lack of descriptive words for all these awesome places! I’ll just let the pics speak for themselves…

This tree was HUGE!!! Just washed up there on the beach!

It was crazy seeing all the trees and logs washed up on the beaches!

Add a comment

Day 2…5/22/2010…Forks, WA…

Ok for all you Twilighters out there…

And boy do they! Practically everywhere you go there is something Twilight related. It’s kinda funny and kinda scary too… ;) The hotels have Twilight themed rooms and the restaurants have Twilight themed meals. No we didn’t stay in the Bella Suite at the Dew Drop Inn…we just got a regular room. :) There is not one but two Dazzled by Twilight stores and they are only a couple doors down from each other. The have EXCLUSIVE Twilight stuff…we didn’t go in. lol… There is also the newly opened Twilight Lounge as well…didn’t go there either… We did how ever drive around the sprawling metropolitan of Forks to visit the designated Twilight homes and what not.

First we hit the High School…it was pretty funny when we pulled up there were girls taking pics and husbands/dads sitting in their cars waiting. I got a kick out of that. Chaz came with me to take pics…cuz he loves me so much! ;) The school actually say Quillayute High School on it.

Dr. Cullen’s parking space…exciting, no?!

The Cullen House…

The Swan House…This house doesn’t work for me at all…just sayin’ lol…

Just a nice view right down the road from the Swan’s house…

That’s as close as we got to the store…drive by…

You can pretend this is the cafe they ate in hahahaha…sorry about Chaz’s full mouth…I tend to not pay much attention to the whole picture when I snap away…I get focused on what I want to take the pic of and miss other things. lol…

And the Thriftway and Outfitters across the street from our motel…

And that concludes our tour of Forks…I missed the actual front of the hospital and the Police Station some how…but I wasn’t too sad about it. ;)

Add a comment

Day 2…5/22/2010…Sol Duc Falls & Beaver Falls…

The hike to Sol Duc was also a .8 mile hike. It was an easy hike NO STAIRS! ;)
A little bunch of falls on the way up to Sol Duc…I don’t know if they have an actual name or not. I’m sure they do. And if I did a little research I’m sure I could find out…but that’s not the point of this hike… :)

I’ve seen pics of these falls before and was pretty impressed! I wasn’t disappointed! I even asked Charlie if it was wrong of me to be more impressed with them than Niagara Falls. He said no because this wasn’t a huge tourist spot. You have to actually put some effort into getting there. There aren’t a million and one people everywhere. And we actually got down right next to them! We went down on the rock just above the little fall there on the right. And got some of the pics below…

I love this one the best…the clouds came in for a little bit and blocked out that harsh sun that was causing bright spots in the rest of them. And it lookes so dreamy from the mist and water that was spraying up on the lens and camera and me! :)

This was looking away from the falls…

Beaver Falls…before we left Chaz looked up all kinds of places he wanted to go visit. There are a gazillion waterfalls where we traveled so he wanted to see as many as he could.
This waterfall was said to be up Highway 113…not to far from the 101. There would be an abandoned rock quarry on the left and a long pull out on the right. No signs anywhere and Chaz was wondering why. So we spot the quarry…and then the pull out immediately after that. And as we are pulling over I see the falls on the right. We soon found out why there was no signage… The path down was just what had been warn down from people going up and down to see it. Not a great path and right off the road…I only almost slipped and slid down once…
I had read that it’s best to come early spring when the river is running more. It was still pretty cool but I could tell it could be even better if we had come another time.

1 comment

Day 2…5/22/2010…Lake Crescent, Marymere Falls…

First glimpse of Lake Crescent…

I love this shot of Chaz…

Not much to say about these pics…I think they speak for themselves! The water was so clear and beautiful!

Some wildlife! And they just stood there and let us walk up pretty close…so used to people being around I’m sure.
Run little deer the vampires will get you! ;)

That is supposed to be the instant version of the above pic…but it decided to expose for the trees and blew out the rest…shoulda known it would do that…

The hike to Marymere Falls was .8 miles…it was a pretty easy hike for my out of shape butt…until we got to the stairs…luckily they weren’t too bad…but they did show me just how out of shape I am! Later I will share with you the stairs that amost KILLED me! But all of the climbing was worth it, since I made it home alive!

The falls were pretty cool! The most impressive of the weekend but still cool to look at and take pics of!

A nice lady asked if we wanted a pic in front of the falls…oh sure I guess. ;)

This little tunnel takes you under the road and back toward Lake Crescent. To me it looked like it could go anywhere so I had to stop and take a picture of it!

Add a comment

Day 2… 5/22/2010… Port Angeles…

I’m sure Port Angeles is a nice little place and if we would have had more time to explore it would have been cool. But we had a lot planned for the day so we quickly went by the Lincoln Theater and Bella Italia before we headed out. Honestly if you’ve seen pics of it on the net…you’ve seen it. LOL!

Add a comment

Day 1… 5/21/2010…

Aaron and Keli were kind enough to take the kids off our hands so we could get away for a couple days before Chaz takes off to AZ for a few weeks before the move…

So we dropped off the kids and took off! First we stopped at Olive Garden and ate some yummy soup, salad and bread sticks! And hurried off to the Ferry…missed it by two cars…darn it! If only he hadn’t had that second bowl of soup! ;)

So while we sat and waited I walked out in the rain to give my camera a shower and take some pics while Chaz snoozed…

It was a weird feeling when the ferry started moving! I hadn’t realized it had even started moving until I was walking the opposite way it was moving! That is such a weird feeling kind of like an escalator but more subtle…

First Charlie and I ventured up to the “Sun” Deck…Not much sun around these parts so it cracked us up to see that! Especially with the wind and rain right then…It was a cool sun deck anyway…

The sunset was awesome…

After the ferry we drove on to Port Angeles…
The sunset was awesome from the road too!

Our motel…The Royal Victorian…

…it was too late for the Twilight attractions to be open…and too early when we were up and ready to leave the next day for them to be open too so we didn’t go in Bella Italia or the Lincoln Theater… And my pics of it are rather crap…But you’ll get to see those on day 2 of this journey…

Add a comment

Wreck This Journal…

WTJ ~ RUB HERE WITH DIRT.
I need to get a spray adhesive to keep the sand on the page!

Ruby Beach, WA

WTJ ~ LOSE THIS PAGE.
(THROW IT OUT.)
ACCEPT THE LOSS.

1 comment

52 Weeks…

Week #22…Ground Level or Low POV…

Week #21…JUMP…No one was injured in the making of this picture…although after he landed he quickly asked if that was good? Yeah why? Cuz it kinda jarred me… Yeah it was good. Good! :)

Add a comment