Author: Dustin Hartzler

We got up early on Friday to head north for whale watching.  We bought a groupon for a whale watching tour before leaving home. This allowed us to go for half-price.  Our goal was to be on the road by 7am.  Surprisely we actually left about 6:30.

Google maps told us it would be a little over 4 hours, but with the road going up around Mt. Rainer national park, we wanted to give ourselves plenty of time to make the ferry in Anacortes. We had to be on the 11:55 ferry headed to Friday Harbor. I was a little disappointed that we didn’t have time to drive our car on the ferry, but my first ferry experience was cool nonetheless. They unload people first, then cars, and we only had 10 minutes to get to our tour from the ferry once in Friday Harbor.

The whale watching tour was really neat. We were on a 50ft boat that took us out about an hour away from the port. The main attraction was to see an Orca Whale (Killer Whale), which is the black and white whales that you see at Sea World. We saw nearly a half dozen Orka’s and we also saw a humpback whale which was really neat too. Our boat driver didn’t want to disturb them, so we weren’t able to get too close to them.

After our tour, our plan was to drive back to Seattle for dinner, but the tour finished at 5:30pm and the ferry back to the mainland didn’t leave until 6:30pm which would have put us having dinner in Seattle at 9 o’clock. Since Josh and I were starving we stopped at local place called Cask & Schooner for a small meal. The girls had salads and the guys had clam chowder.

On the ferry we found a table that someone had started an 1000 piece puzzle, so we worked on that to make the time pass quickly.

Back on the mainland, we decided to stop for dinner instead of waiting until we got to Seattle. We stopped at the Rockfish Grill and enjoyed some local fish entrees and a live band. Then we got back in the car for a 90 minute drive to Seattle. We stayed near Lake Union. Our hotel had a great location and it was a bit cheaper than staying in the downtown area itself.

On Saturday morning, our first stop in Seattle was the World Famous Pike’s Place Market. They had tons of local vendors who were selling things from art, to clothing, to produce, to fish. Plus the majority of the stands were giving away samples. We enjoyed samples of peaches, nectarines, jam, honey, blueberry vinegar and organic apple chips! Since it was the last day of our trip, we decided to not buy any produce since we didn’t want to carry it around all day nor did we have room to take it to the airport with us.

Plus, from the Market, you could see the summit of Mount Rainier. Even though it’s more than 100 miles away, you could see it’s peak in between the clouds. This was the first time we could see the peak on the trip.

Then Melody and I went on the Duck tour, it was a little bit corny….but a travel hacker site said it was a great way to get out on Lake Union and have a view of the city/houseboats. Our tour was redirected a bit due to the Rock and Roll Marathon that morning. We captured some pictures of the city from the water. It was an amphibious vehicle, so we were able to drive around town, then we drove right into the lake, it was definitely pretty cool!

Josh and Sarah went on the Underground tour, which explored city blocks that are currently beneath where the street is now.

We met up at the Space Needle for lunch. We thought we were being smart and would go to the restaurant (then you didn’t have to pay admission) order the minimum required food (which is only a few dollars more than the ticket up) and then find cheaper food elsewhere if we were still hungry. It turned out to be on Saturdays/Sundays they only serve a 3-course fixed price brunch. We were already up there…so we decided to splurge and make it lunch/dinner.

Before leaving downtown we wanted to see some glass blowing. Seattle is famous for glass blowing and has the most studios and artists in the world outside of Murano, Italy. The most famous place is Chihuly Gardens, but since we splurged on the tour/space needle we decided we needed to stop spending money. So we stopped by the Seattle Glass Blowing Studio instead. They made traditional items like bowls and vases and they also made some really cool lawn ornaments.

We had asked our waitress if she had six hours left in the Seattle area before having to go to the airport, what would she do, she suggested Snoqualmie Falls. The hiking trails were closed to get a good view from the bottom but we had a great view from the upper observation decks.

We still had a few hours to kill before heading to the airport. We ended up doing a little shopping and all of us found at least one deal at Half Price Books.

Our plane took off at 11:15 pm PST, luckily we both were able to get some sleep on the plane. We had a short layover in Chicago and were back to Dayton by 8:30am. After a few hours of napping we are up trying to stay awake again until bedtime. We both have to get back to work tomorrow, hopefully we adjust back to EST as quick as possible.

Thank you all for following our journey this summer, we enjoyed sharing it with you. We have a couple days of beach time planned in late July…but other than that we don’t know where the next adventure will take us, we are always up for suggestions!

This morning we prepared a breakfast in our Guest House. If you’ve been following us for awhile, you know we like to find other lodging accommodations then just staying in hotels all the time. We stayed in Eugene, Oregon for two nights in a couple’s guest house. It is a small two bedroom, two bathroom house that’s attached to their house. It was built for the owner’s mother, who lives in San Francisco and refuses to move to Oregon, so they started renting it out on AirBnB.com. Since it was built for his mother, it was done up right, beautiful wood trim/floor, tile, and decor.

We left around 9am and headed out to Crater Lake. It was about a 3 hour drive south east from where are staying in Eugene. The drive had some great views of the trees and the mountains.

Crater Lake National Park is a United States National Park located in southern Oregon and was established in 1902. The park is the fifth oldest national park in the United States and the only one in the state of Oregon. The park consists of Crater Lake, a remnant of a destroyed volcano, Mount Mazama, and the surrounding hills and forests.

The lake is 1,943 feet deep at its deepest point, which makes it the deepest lake in the United States, the second deepest in North America and the ninth deepest in the world. And it has the bluest natural water we’ve ever seen in a body of water. The lake has no rivers running into it, so it’s filled with rain water and melted snow. Here are some pictures:

Even though it’s mid-June, they had gotten snow the day before and a majority of the road was closed. There was still snow on the ground even though it was 55 degrees. And of course, I was wearing shorts! I’m having a hard time dressing appropriately in this weather!

After leaving Crater Lake, we consulted our trusty “Off the Beaten Path Oregon” book and found a waterfall that was close to our path home. Toketee Falls is a waterfall that drops 120 feet. It was a short hike (less than a half mile) from the parking lot on a very well marked path.

The last stop of the day was a natural springs (Umpqua Hot Springs). Again, it was a short hike from the car up a pretty steep path. There were several pools of water with them naturally maintaining 110 degrees. We didn’t bring our swim gear, otherwise we would have gotten in!

We headed back towards Eugene and had to stop at a Bike store owner’s house who rented us a bike rack for our biking adventure tomorrow. After a quick stop at the grocery store, we headed home for to make a late dinner. We made a grain free lasagna with zucchini as the noodles. It was interesting trying to cook in our guest home because we had very limited dishes. We even had to pick up a spatula at the store so we could brown our meat.

Today was one of my kind of vacation days: a relax day.

We had such a gorgeous view from our condo and we didn’t have much planned, so we stayed here most of the day.

After making a vegetable stir fry and bacon for breakfast, we hiked back down to the beach to explore. There was a cave that we crawled through and I climbed a couple of the rocks.

Most of the beach is covered with water when the tide was in and it was a low tide in the morning. The sand was nice and firm to walk on. The views were incredible, but the wind was fierce and windy. It was at least 10 degrees colder on the beach than it was up at our condo.

We stayed here for lunch and enjoyed bison meat taco salads while overlooking the ocean.

After lunch we were all on our computers catching up with our email and blog posts.

For dinner, Josh and Sarah ran out to a local fish market and got Local Rock Fish. We blackened it and ate it while admiring the breathtaking view (can you tell I really like the view here?).

We finished up the evening by watching Jurassic Park 1 & 2 since some of the scenes were shot in Fern Valley that we drove through yesterday.

Well, that’s all for today. We’ve got a lot of driving ahead of us for tomorrow.

Hello from San Francisco!

We got into town late on Thursday night and rode a shuttle from the airport. When we finally got settled, it was 3am back at home and we were exhausted!

Today was a busy day which we spent with three different friends.

First up, we met one of my friends from online in San Jose. Sean is listener to my podcast and we’ve done some work together before. We picked him up at his condo and went to a local tea shop called Fantasia. The tea was really good and the weather was beautiful, so we sat outside and enjoyed some fruit flavored green tea.

Up next, was my favorite part of the trip. I got to meet my friend Mark, who I used to work with at Whirlpool. He now works for Apple in Cupertino. If you know me at all, you know I’m a huge Apple fan and I was so excited to see the Apple Campus.

Mark took us to lunch at Caffé Mac which is the best cafeteria, we’ve ever experienced. All of the food is organic and most of it was gluten free. Exactly the way we like it!

We spent some time eating lunch and walking around campus and of course had to get our picture taken in front of Apple sign.

After we left Apple, we decided to stop Google since it’s was on the way. They had another extremely large campus. We thought we’d be able to check out their store and get something cool with Google’s logo on it, but you had to know an employee that works there in order to get in. So after getting a picture with a Google bike, we headed out of Mountain View. (Google furnishes employees with bicycles to ride to and from work or from one office building to another).

Once we left Google, we headed over to the coast to see Poplar Beach. It was the first beach of the trip and it was extremely windy and a little bit chilly!

It was actually much warmer once we climbed down a small cliff to the sand. This was our first experience with the craziness of San Francisco’s weather. It can be 10 degrees difference in temperatures between two areas in close proximity.

After the beach we headed up Hwy 1 toward San Francisco and on to Marin County where we are staying for the next 3 nights.  We headed across the Golden Gate Bridge which was almost completely fogged in at the time.

After checking out the hotel we headed to Tiburon a little bit south of where we are staying (still on the north side of the bay) for dinner with a colleague Melody is working on a paper with through the American College of Clinical Pharmacy.  We ate at Servino’s which was an Italian place right on the water!  

We splurged a bit on a gluten free pizza, it’s been a while since we have had pizza and it was awesome!  Tina and Wilfred shared all about this area of California and Melody learned a lot about pharmacy in this area, she loves connecting with people all trying to advance the practice around the country. It’s also fun to hear life experiences from different perspectives and meet new people. Before we knew it it was 10pm and we were exhausted!