We visited a town which seemed so utterly familiar to me, but this sense came to me from novels, not necessarily my own experience. The references to blackberry brambles and foggy roadside stops in Tom Robbins novels, and the abandoned logging roads in Sometimes a Great Notion. Although this town was far from the small Oregon coastal town Manzanita, which my family frequents, the architecture and vegetation was nearly indistinguishable: cabins with greying, moss covered wooden slats, Pacific Madrona trees with peeling red skin, water logged mushrooms, ocean grass, sand-pipers birds darting across smooth, wet stones.  

In fitting with the Northwest landscape and culture, we had to try some Blue Bay oysters from a little town called “Hamma Hamma,” (most of the town names were Native American, tribes like S’Klallam and Suquamish). Delicious, of course!

We also made it up to the Olympic National Park, to hike hurricane ridge. We were blessed with a perfectly sunny, crisp day. After completing a 6 mile loop to Hurricane hill on our nordic skis, I discovered that I must have lost the car keys when we slid backwards down the hill on our backs. Terrified, we back-tracked ALL the way back to the peak of the trail, finishing with 12 miles instead of 6. We found the keys!