the long post...

(I apologize for the length of this post. there were several hundred pictures I wanted to share with everyone, so I had to sift through them!)

So, I'm home. I don't want to be. I walked out of the airplane in Little Rock to 97 degree weather and probably the same percentage of humidity. Drove back to West Monroe and it was 100 degrees. I think the absolute hottest it got in Washington/Oregon was around 79. It was absolutely PERFECT weather. Cold, even.

Sooo, the run down of our trip...

Laura and I flew into Seattle on Monday. We got there about noon their time, 2 our time. Wasn't too much of jetlag as far as the time change was concerned, but we hadn't slept but maybe 2 hours in the past 24 hours at that point. (She didn't get off work until 11 the night before, and our flight left at 6am...and she hadn't packed.) So mom and dad picked us up at the airport, and we went straight to the Space Needle.





Pretty cool, huh.

After that, we drove out to the little town where we were going whale watching the next morning. We got a hotel and then went down to the marina and walked around and looked at all the fancy yachts. I really want one! There was a pretty part of the pier that you could see the mountain in the distance. It truly is quite pretty out there. It was so hard to capture the mountains in the distance. It's very hazy up there, so they don't turn out very well. And honestly, pictures don't do them any justice.







The next day, of course, was the whale watching trip! They took us out pretty far in Puget Sound and we think they even crossed into Canadian waters. I don't have a passport, so we joked that I illegally crossed the border. Anyway, we got some awesome shots of the whales. They really performed for us! I have a 35mm camera that I used in addition to my digital one, and I still have to drop that off to get developed. I'm curious how those turned out. I'll probably dedicate a whole post to those pictures, so stayed tuned :)


(can you tell we were freezing?)


(click this one to zoom and see that big fella)

After the whale watching tour, we caught a ferry across the Puget Sound and started driving towards the coast. Laura and I really wanted to see the Pacific Ocean, and I REALLY wanted to see the waves crashing against the rocks. We went to the first beach area, and it was COLD!! Like maybe 50 degrees? Pretty chilly. There wasn't a rocky coast, but we found tons of sand dollars. You can't hardly find any that aren't broken at the southern beaches, and the tide was really low and the whole beach was covered in them!





Then we went to some of the area lighthouses. I love lighthouses. I think they are so neat looking. I had to get some pictures of the ones we saw...especially after hiking 2 miles one way to see them!








Isn't that like amazingly gorgeous?! I literally could've stayed out there all day. I mean, I don't see how people can see that and still think there isn't a God. What?

After that, we went to my 2nd favorite place of the trip (first being the whales). Mount St. Helen! I didn't really know the entire history of the place, so mom read her little book she had bought on the drive up there. Lemme tell ya...that's not an easy drive either! Not for the faint at heart. There were several places along the side of the mountain road that had no guard rail and a shear drop off on the side. Every time dad rounded a curve we would holler...and that just made him drive faster!! Anyway, it was VERY impressive. Especially because the explosion happened in like 1980, and the destruction path is still completely bare. There are patches of grass and stuff, but for the most part it's just dried up lava. Pumice perhaps? Anyway, the pictures didn't come out that great, it didn't show up all that well, but here ya go..








See the path of destruction? This is what it used to look like before the blast.

Anyway, that's just a taste of the pictures. We took a TON of them. I'll have to go through and edit some of them to repost. Hope this didn't bore anyone! We really had a great time! Our flight left this morning (Thursday) at 7:55, so we left the hotel around 5:30 to get there, and we actually should've gotten there earlier. Seattle at 5:30 is busy! Anyway, we got to Atlanta around 3:45, and our connecting flight didn't leave until 6:40 so we had a pretty good layover. We ate lunch and shopped a little. Got back to Little Rock around 7:15 and Laura's boyfriend picked us up and took us back to her place. I left not long after that cause I had a 3 hour drive and wanted to get back before it got too late. Now it's 1:40am and I'm headed to bed. Been up almost 24 hours again! Gotta be back to work tomorrow at 2.

The honeymoon's over...:)