Day 52 > 56 - Into the Woods

DATE: Thursday april 28th

TIME: 12:05pm MST

LOCATION: Keystone SD

Truth be told, I’m not actually in Keystone. I’m currently on the road headed towards Minnesota. Figured I’d use this drive to catch up a bit.

So we had a very uneventful drive from Portland to Seattle, I don’t even think we stopped. Just drove straight through to the hotel then just chilled through to the evening. But this was not an uneventful day! That evening my Dad landed in Seattle to join us for a few days of the trip. He got to the hotel around 8pm local time and we got to hang out and catch up into the evening. For reference this has been the longest time in my life that I hadn’t seen any of my direct family, so it was great to spend some time with my dad.

Luckily for him, the time zones were working out in his favor so every morning when I got up he was just finishing up work for the day. Pretty good deal! Our first day was spent exploring the city of Seattle. We got out around our normal time and took an Uber into the city. It was a pretty nice place! We mainly hung out down by the water. We walked the market for a while and explored some stores. The bulk of our time in that area was waiting in line at the first ever Starbucks store. They had exclusive merch and we had to get some for my mom. After Starbucks we continued to explore and came across the famed Gum wall. It is exactly as it sounds. Kinda gross but in a cool way. We made our way down to the water and took the observation wheel to get a really good look at the city. Pictures below, very good view. After the wheel we took a couple mile walk through the city in search of local coffee. We walked through a bunch of really nice streets and came across a statue park at the base of the space needle. Very pretty area. After locating coffee we went back to the hotel for a while, then went out to see Morbius. Honestly, it was trash. But hey, I enjoyed the popcorn.

Our second day in the area was spent at Olympic National Park. Olympic wasn’t originally on the to do list, but my dad and I did some research and decided that was the best park in the area to visit. This was a good decision. The drive up was absolutely beautiful and we got to see Canada! We took a 2 hour hike around the lodge area and had an amazing time. The way the moss collected on the trees in those woods was incredible. Pictures below are a must see, such an amazing place. The lodge itself was placed on Crescent Lake. I definitely want to stay there some day.

The next day took us on our first major drive with my dad packed into the backseat. We had a pretty uneventful drive to Cor Dulain (I think that’s how you spell it). It’s a beautiful small town east of Seattle with an amazing lake. We didn’t get to spend much time there since it was just an overnight, but we did go see Batman again which was fun. Still good second time around. I’ll definitely be revisiting that place.

From here we continued north to Glacier National Park. We had plans to spend a full day in Glacier, but my dad noticed that the visitors center was only open on our travel day, rather than our actual visiting day. We woke up with plenty of time to make it to the visitor center, but failed to take into account time zones once again. This put us on track to just barely miss the visitors center, which was an unacceptable outcome. We hauled ass all the way north through a blizzard and just barely made it to the park before the visitor center closed. I am so happy we got to see Glacier in the snow, it was so beautiful.

We then got our actual day in Glacier. We took a nice long hike following one of the rivers and got to see some beautiful snow covered forests. Dad and Deniz had a lot of fun using this wildlife scanning app. It really played into my dads love of the outdoors and Pokémon go. The perfect pairing. The both of them were scanning throughout the hike. After our hike we explored one of the little villages in the park before driving as much of the scenic road as we could. Most of the park was closed for the season. Our drive took us along one of the glacial lakes in the park. This lake was stunning. It was seriously like looking at a mirror, such perfect reflections of the surrounding terrain. The pictures can’t do this place justice, it’s just something you have to see for yourself.

Unfortunately, Glacier was my dads last stop with us and he left early morning on the 19th of April. It was honestly pretty sad waking up and not seeing him working in the living room, I had gotten used to him traveling with us. But I’m the bright side, this trip with us seems to have reignited his love of National Parks so I doubt it will be the last time we go park hopping.

As I write this, I have 9 days remaining of the trip. I think seeing my dad made me realize how much I missed home. I have had a great time on the trip but I think I am ready to come home. And if you are reading this Dad, I had a great time with you on this leg of the trip! See you soon!

Thats all for now, stay safe out there

Signing off

-H