ITS ALL ABOUT ART

Almost daily painter, traveler and art lover
It's all about art, what else is there?
@lisahutart on instagram

Friday, August 2, 2019

Long Road Trip: Olympic National Park & Victoria, BC

I've got to get caught up on this blog; I'm currently camping on day 21 and the scenery from 4 beautiful National Parks is blurring together. So Day 11, we camped in Willapa Bay. Loved the camp site, we could walk 200 yards behind us to a beach. We watched the tide and the sunset. I collected a few pieces of seaglass, shells and rocks. We saw many oyster shells and then did a little research and realized what a big industry it is here. Google taught me all about oyster harvesting. Ya know, if I didn't have Google, I'd probably travel with an encyclopedia. ha.

View from Hurricane Ridge, Olympic National Park
plein air pastel

drove over lots of bridges

There is something so powerful about ocean waves
Learning to "be still" is a little easier here than say ... at Target

Lighthouses all around

Lisa gets to paint and Meriwether takes photos

Meriwether? Well, we are listening to "Undaunted Courage" about the Lewis & Clark expedition (I highly recommend it) and since my husband is an explorer at heart, reads maps for fun ... we shall now refer to him as Meriwether. You can too.

Off to Port Angeles, WA our staging area for fun around Olympic NP. So far we've camped in maybe 12 camp spots. Even though we set up pretty quickly; it's still a pain making sure everything in the camper is rigged so all our gear doesn't tumble around like it's in a life size rock polisher. I have a collection of screws that appear on the floor every few days. Occasionally one forgets to move a box of crackers or lock a drawer then it's a fun surprise to open the camper door and see what was let loose. Thank goodness we haven't spilled the Oreos yet.

So, 4 nights near Port Angeles allowed Meriwether to do a couple of bike rides, a short hike in the park, driving around taking pictures, painting, dinner at a brewery, laundry, grocery shopping and a ferry ride over to Victoria, BC. I really wanted to visit Butchart Gardens, but we only had one day in Canada.

Loved the little water taxis - they looked like bumper cars
as they putted in and out through the inner harbour.

Victoria is known as the Flower City and very well deserved

The gardens at the Empress hotel were amazing, and the best part was their beehive with a surrounding flower garden. Had lunch on the veranda with bread and honey of course. It's wonderful that so many places are intentionally helping our honeybees thrive and survive. We also stumbled upon a french patisserie called La Roux in Chinatown ... honestly ... it was fantastic. We found Victoria charming.
Like every single spot we've been in the past few weeks, we wish we had more time and plan to come back again one day.