tldr; déjà vu.
Back in Seattle after our couple of weeks in Canada, we met up with Choi’s brother, Patrick. Patrick flew in to visit us for about a week. We spent a few days in Seattle, exploring the city more, showing him some of our favorite places that we’d discovered at our last visit, discovering new places, and eating good food (and drinking some beer).
After Seattle, we made our way back to Olympic National Park. Patrick was looking forward to a few days out in nature so we headed back to stay at Emerald Valley Inn where we’d stayed with Brooke and Paulo about a month before. Patrick moved in to our guest room and we parked right next door. We spent lots of time watching the emus, goats, and Donna the Donkey romp around their pen while chickens had free range of the property. On several work calls that week I had to quickly mute myself as the donkey brayed and chickens clucked around me.
We also met Tango, an orange tabby cat with remarkable opposable thumbs! Choi had an abrupt awakening one morning when I left the van door open and the cat leapt inside and onto the bed. Since Choi and I are both allergic, we tried to carefully and quickly shoo him out without touching him at all, giving us a new appreciation for the term, “herding cats”.
Just a little bit later that morning while I was trying to get some work done, Tango jumped into my lap and decided to make himself comfortable by sitting on my laptop keyboard and chewing on my headphone cord. I finally gave in and gave him some of the pets that he clearly craved, my nose and eyes slowly getting itchy and dry.
We got some firewood and made a fire and s’mores in the evenings. As we sat out at night, Patrick showed us some tricks on the new iPhone to take amazing pictures of the stars.
During the day, Patrick and Choi headed off to explore some of the areas we had seen with Brooke and Paulo like Mount Storm King, the Hoh Rainforest, and Rialto Beach.
While they explored, I sat out with my laptop and worked by Lake Crescent . It was pretty beautiful and peaceful! I was even greeted by some friendly ducks who came all the way onto my yoga mat to say hello.
On our last afternoon, we all headed to Devil’s Punchbowl, an easy trail to a very dark and spooky train tunnel and then to a bridge with bright blue clear water. It was too cold to swim but it was beautiful. While at Devil’s Punchbowl we also got some bad news. My little brother, who was supposed to be flying to Washington the next day with his fiancé for their wedding in Olympic National Park in just 3 days, had tested positive for covid. Their dreamy Olympic wedding was cancelled and we had to scramble to change our plans too. (Spoiler: in just three weeks, we were able to fly home for their absolutely perfect and beautiful wedding back home in Austin). In the moment though, we were super sad for them (see my sad face below).
The next morning, Patrick headed out early and Choi and I left later that day, having shifted our schedule a bit to do a tour of the Oregon coast.
Patrick, we love your appreciation for great food, your iphone photo tips, and your excitement to try out new hikes and explore new places. Along We Go!
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