Washington 2010 - part one

We did so much on our trip to visit Amanda in Washington that it may take me a few posts to share some of my favorite photos. And blogger is being such a pain about uploading photos that it is taking me forever to get them on here...ugh !

So part one - The Olympic peninsula and Whidbey Naval Air base

The Olympic National Park and surrounding area was so breathtakingly beautiful. We stopped at a few different areas of Cresent Lake to take photos....gorgeous blue green water surrounded by mountains and wildflowers...

We hiked to a couple of different waterfalls while there...Sol Duc Falls was one of them.

The forests were so lush and green...

And some of the trees are enormous..

We spent the night in Forks. For any of you who read the Twilight series you'll know this is where the vampires called home. It was actually just a seedy little town...not much at all to look at. But after getting settled into our hotel we went out to LaPush (where the werewolves in the Twilight books lived) and hiked out to Second Beach...what an amazing place. This panorama with Jake in it is one of my favorite photos from the whole vacation. (click on it for a larger image)

The same beach at sunset...another favorite photo..

We also were able to get onto Amanda's base during our visit and see where she works and trains...

We even got to go on the plane she spends most of her working hours in. Jake loved this (actually we all did) Coming down that steep ladder...not so fun...

It was really cool to see firsthand Amanda's workstation where she tracks submarines from (or practices tracking them...when not tracking the real thing)

Love this photo of one of the planes in being worked on with the sun setting beyond the doorway at the far end.

Amanda has really done so well in her 3 years of service so far and we are really proud of her.