More than a year has passed since our 2015 Pacific Northwest vacation, proving I'm an embarrassingly slow blogger, but I am determined to document not only this trip but also all our 2016 adventures in time! In case you need a refresher of the first few days of this vacation, you can read about Mount St. Helens here and Mount Rainier here.

After a few days exploring Mount St. Helens and Mount Rainier National Park, our 2015 Pacific Northwest adventure was taking us even further on the Olympic Peninsula. The majority of our vacation was going to be spent hiking the mountains, walking through the rain forests and wandering along the coasts of Olympic National Park.

Day 3: September 5, 2015, continued

Our route from Mount Rainier National Park to our lodging accommodations in Port Angeles, just outside of Olympic, was going to take us roughly four hours. Since we knew we would be logging a lot of time in the car, we had planned accordingly by bringing the audio books of two personal favorites that seemed appropriate given our trip's destinations: A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail by Bill Bryson and Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mount Everest Disaster by John Krakauer.

For the duration of our Olympic National Park visit, we were going to be staying at farm that served as a bed and breakfast. It was our first experience using the website AirBnB.com, and I was sold on this particular listing when I read they have five dogs. And goats. I mean, really, what more do you need to be happy? The fact that this farm had gorgeous views of the Olympic mountains was merely a bonus.



Day 4: September 6, 2015

Hurricane Ridge
Sunday was our first full day to explore Olympic National Park, but the weather wasn't looking very cooperative as our day started; the clouds had followed us from Mount Rainier to Olympic. Nevertheless, we headed to the nearest section of the park, Hurricane Ridge, roughly 20 miles from Port Angeles.

As we drove the winding road up to the ridge through thick fog, I had flashbacks to the time we almost died on Mount Rainier. Listening to Krakauer's personal account about one of the deadliest climbing seasons on Mount Everest also put all kinds of visions of our untimely demise into my head. We Midwesterners should really stay on flat land when the weather is so dicey. After many twisting curves along the road, we finally made it to the top. And our bravery was rewarded with views of more fog.



We browsed the visitor center and gift shop, hoping the early morning fog would break, but after a while, we accepted that we wouldn't see much more than the optical illusion of the Olympic Mountains hidden behind all the fog. Hurricane Ridge is known for its sweeping views on a clear day, but Washington isn't exactly known for its clear days. Luckily, we knew we'd be able to return to Hurricane Ridge later in the week for a second chance to see those remarkable views.

Sol Duc Falls
After successfully navigating our way back down the twisting road, we enjoyed lunch at a Port Angeles restaurant called the New Day Eatery and then journeyed a bit further into the National Park boundaries to the Sol Duc Valley. One of the sights I had bookmarked in my planning was Sol Duc Falls. The easy hike to the overlook for these misty falls was less than a mile and gave us our first taste of the Olympics' old-growth forests.

Day 5: September 7, 2015

The plan for our second day in Olympic (which was also my birthday!) was to travel about two hours to our first destination on the western side of the park, the Hoh Rain Forest, and then stop at some of the beaches along the coast. The road from Port Angeles to the rain forest passes through Forks, Washington, also known as the setting for the popular Twilight series. I'm not a fan of the series (I've never actually read any of the books), but it was neat to see some of the signs around town that obviously play into the series' popularity.





Hoh Rain Forest
The Hoh Rain Forest offers just a glimpse at the type of temperate rain forest that once blanketed the Pacific Northwest from Oregon to Alaska. In a typical year, the Hoh Rain Forest receives 12 to 14 feet of precipitation.



But 2015 was not a typical year as the Pacific Northwest suffered drought conditions. As I mentioned in a previous post, there were wildfires burning throughout Washington during our trip, and while the Hoh Rain Forest was not one of these areas that fell victim to fire, the drought still left its mark.

Of all the sights we were going to see in Olympic National Park, I was probably most looking forward to the Hoh Rain Forest. Pictures of this lush, dazzling place have a magical quality about them. But because of the drought that had preceded and continued through our trip, we didn't get to experience the Hoh Rain Forest in its usual glory, and I was a little underwhelmed. The normally beautiful greenery had a lackluster brown hue to it. I'm a graphic designer, so I'm not oblivious to the fact that photos of the Hoh Rain Forest undergo post-processing, but drought was the culprit here, not just unrealistic expectations set by overly zealous photographers armed with Lightroom and Photoshop (and if I'm being honest, I've done some editing to make the greens pop a bit more in my photos of the Hoh Rain Forest, too).





Despite the disappointing color, there was still an unquestionable beauty to this place, and I found it incredibly humbling to roam among the giant Sitka Spruce and Western Hemlock trees.


We also took a small trail detour to see the Hoh River, known for its stunningly blue water that originates from the Hoh Glacier on Mount Olympus.



Ruby Beach, Second Beach of La Push and Rialto Beach
I have often proclaimed that given the choice between mountains and beaches, I will always chose mountains, but if I were to be a beach-kind-of-girl, the rugged beaches of the Pacific coast would be my kind of beaches. Not only do they offer a wild beauty, but they also offer the possibility (albeit a small one) of seeing sea otters!

Ben & Kim vacation fun fact: I always tease Ben about the fact that he denied me the opportunity to see sea otters, one of my favorite animals, during our honeymoon (a story that someday I'll share). The Olympic coastline could have helped Ben erase that sad, sad memory,  as sea otters were reintroduced along the Washington coast in 1969 and 1970, but unfortunately our Olympic beach experience was otter-less.

Our first experience with the Olympic National Park coastline was Ruby Beach, the northernmost beach of the Kalaloch area of the National Park and perhaps the most easily accessible of all the beaches we visited. From the parking lot, the beach is just a short walk down a bluff.



The beach itself is rocky, not sandy, and driftwood is scattered up and down the shore.



To me, the most striking features of Ruby Beach (and all the beaches we visited) were the rock islands shaped by years and years of wind and water erosion known as sea stacks.



From Ruby Beach, we drove to Second Beach of La Push, perhaps my favorite beach of the day simply because soaking up the sights of this beach requires a little effort via a short hike through old growth forest. Again, driftwood was scattered all about (the last bit of the hike even requires scrambling over driftwood to reach your destination), but Second Beach was actually sandy.



It was the first day of the annual Paint the Peninsula Plein Air Painting Competition held on the Olympic Peninsula, and we actually had a chance to experience some of the professional artists painting their unique take on the National Park along Second Beach. If I were a painter, I would be all about Plein Air painting; I'll take any excuse to be outside!



Our last stop was Rialto Beach, about 15 minutes from Second Beach. It's another easily accessible beach, and as I was planning our trip, Rialto was one of the most highly recommended beaches to visit; it seems to be a favorite among visitors to Olympic. One of the big draws of Rialto is the one mile hike to Hole-in-the-Wall during low tide. Sadly, we arrived at Rialto pretty late in the day and we had no notion of the tide schedule (a big no-no if you plan to do any type of beach hiking). We really only stayed at Rialto long enough to say we'd been there before we started our trek back to Port Angeles.

I hadn't really considered the beaches a top attraction of Olympic (I'm a mountain girl, remember?) but in hindsight, I wish I would have planned our beach excursions around the tide schedule and allotted more time to explore everything the National Park coastlines have to offer.

Overall, I feel very fortunate that I was able to spend my 28th birthday wandering through the rain forest and meandering along the rugged beaches of Olympic National Park. Sitting along one of the beaches, Ben gave me my birthday/early anniversary gift of a wooden ring he had made me. Every time I wear it, it kindles fond memories of our trip (despite our not seeing any sea otters *wink*).

Kimberly

P.S. I promise not to take a year to share Part 2 of the Olympic National Park portion of our trip! Maybe only six months...

... kidding. (I hope.)

Today is Annie's birthday. She would have been 13 years old.

With those two short sentences, you probably know the direction this post is heading. Do I even need to continue? Trust me, I want to share all of the happy adventures Ben and I had last year, from National Parks to state parks and everything in between—2016 was the year of many beautiful experiences. But 2016 was also a really tough year for our family, and I hope that writing about those hard experiences will help with my healing.

Two days into the 2016 new year found us visiting a local veterinarian for our greyhound, Drifter. He had always been a picky eater, but he had been pickier than usual, barely eating anything at all in the days leading up to that Saturday vet visit. The problem, we found out, was an abscess in his throat that made eating physically painful for him. Thankfully, with the help of medication and wet dog food, he would be on the mend in no time.

Except then he developed a limp at the very end of February. Ben and I decided to monitor the situation for a few days and see if his new hobble would go away on its own, but as it persisted, we scheduled a vet appointment. One of my family's dogs was experiencing problems with one of her back legs around the same time, and I worried that Drifter had managed a similar feat of pulling one of his muscles, which would require costly surgery to mend.

With the benefit of time and knowledge on my side now, I wish that the diagnosis I dreaded then were the one we received.

Ben came home from that vet visit and said that X-rays revealed some discolored spots on the leg. Our vet suggested these discolorations could be the result of a recent fall that resulted in scuffing the bone. Or it could be osteosarcoma—bone cancer. What? That potential diagnosis wasn't even on my radar.

We scheduled a follow-up appointment to take a second set of X-rays; if the discoloration that appeared in the first set of X-rays grew in just two weeks, we'd know for sure that we were dealing with bone cancer. I hadn't been present at the first vet appointment, but when I saw the second X-rays, I knew. Our sweet, goofy Drifter had bone cancer.

Our vet discussed treatment options with us, ranging from doing nothing to amputation and chemotherapy. Bone cancer in dogs has a poor prognosis regardless, offering anywhere from two months to maybe a year if you follow the amputation and chemotherapy route. And those treatment options come with pretty hefty costs, both financially and physically for the dog. Before we could make any of the difficult decisions, we needed to take Drifter to a specialized vet in the area for more detailed X-rays. If we opted to treat the disease with either amputation or chemotherapy, a bone biopsy would be required to officially determine the osteosarcoma diagnosis and all of this needed to be done through a specialist.

That specialist visit was very eye-opening. Going in, we knew we weren't going to pursue chemotherapy; the best we could hope for was another year with our boy with that option, but knowing the side affects of chemo, what kind of quality of life would that be for him? Amputation, however, wasn't completely out of the question.

Until the specialists' X-rays showed that the bone cancer was actually ravaging both of Drifter's hind legs.

Our difficult decision was made for us; with the tumors in both hind legs, amputation was no longer an option. We opted not to put Drifter through the painful bone biopsy to confirm what the three sets of X-rays already made pretty clear. The vet warned us of some signs to watch for that would indicate his pain had gotten worse and that the cancer had spread to his lungs. All we could do was celebrate the remaining time we had with him.

We dubbed May 20, 2016, "Drifter Day." Ben took the entire day off work and spent it with his sidekick, spoiling him with burgers and extra love.



I came home around noon and the celebration continued with a trip to Dairy Queen for ice cream (for once I didn't even mind that he hovered above me, drooling the entire time), dog cookies, snuggles and a short walk to his favorite neighborhood stop sign; he had to pee on it one more time to make sure all the other neighborhood dogs knew it was his sign.





And then with the help of our vet and her wonderful staff, we said goodbye to our dear deer-like boy.

Though Drifter eventually adopted me, Ben was his person. They lived together for a year before we were married, and they forged an irreplaceable bond during that time. I remember when Ben was researching different dog breeds and he finally settled on a greyhound as his very own first dog. We never imagined we would get so lucky with Drifter.



His laid-back personality was matched only by Ben's own laid-back personality (there is a lot of truth in the joke that dogs and their humans take on traits of each other). He was content to do his own thing, but whenever he wanted attention, he would lean against you until you were forced to acknowledge his presence with some quality pets. Storms absolutely terrified him, as did children, but he tolerated the affections of our young nephew like a champ.



He loved to sprint in the snow and to roo (look up greyhounds rooing on YouTube and you'll understand). He hated the reindeer antlers I bought him but humored me and wore them anyway for Christmas pictures and parties.

Drifter left a greyhound-sized hole in both of our hearts.

In June we fostered and adopted another greyhound. Even though we loved him, he ultimately wasn't a good fit for our family, and we had to return him to the local greyhound rescue. To this day I pray he finds his perfect family and I hope he's doing ok.

And Annie... the birthday girl herself... where do I even begin?

We were forced to say goodbye to my sweet, sweet girl the night before Thanksgiving. Despite being four months removed from the events that transpired that night, I am still haunted by the nightmare, and the burden of details is not one I want to share with any more people than already share it. Losing her was unexpected, violent and traumatic, and that is all I will write in regards to her actual passing.

Instead, I want to write about her life. As I have shared before, we adopted Annie when she was 9 years old, a senior by dog year standards. Even at 12 though, she never acted her age, and strangers who met her often thought she was 5 or 6. In the three short years we shared with her, only the increasing lightening of her black ears betrayed her senior status.

Annie was one of the most loving dogs I have ever met. Strangers weren't actually strangers for very long because she believed every human was a friend. She and I shared a lot of similar traits, but there was one telling difference between us: I tend to shy away from people and connect more with dogs; Annie didn't care much for other dogs and connected with people. On walks in our neighborhood, I will go out of my way to meet dogs. Annie, on the other hand, would go out of her way to meet people, and she always got kind of miffed when passersby didn't acknowledge her. She would turn to look at me with an expression that said, "Can you believe that? They didn't stop to pet me and tell me how cute I am!"

Though she loved all people, I was her favorite, and that was not a status I took lightly; I knew how special it was that she adopted me as her person. Any time we let her in from the back yard, she would run through the house until she found me. Her powers of observation weren't always the best, because I was often watching from the couch as she searched, passing me a few times in the process. The way her eyes would light up and her entire backend would wiggle once she spotted me always conveyed her affection. And I showed mine for her by constantly snuggling with her and saying, "I love you. You know that, right?"

She loved to play ball. Often she didn't even require that we throw the ball for her; she would simply kick it with one of her paws, chase it, pounce it and repeat the process until her attention was distracted. And though she was easily distracted, her powers of focus were actually pretty impressive. She ran into the door from our back yard on occasion because she was so focused on us in the house that she couldn't be bothered to see the door that separated us. She also had a tendency to run into walls because she liked to lead the way but would crane her neck and watch us instead of what was in front of her.

She was my shadow any time I left a room or focused on a particular task at hand. Baby gates intended to keep my family's dogs from specific areas of the house were no match for her when she was determined to follow me; she always cleverly maneuvered these mere obstacles by jumping them or nudging them out of the way with her nose.

Perhaps a little more information than you care to know, but any time I was answering the call of nature and attempted to close the bathroom door all the way, I would hear her bounce off of it in an unsuccessful attempt to follow me; finally I gave up any notion of privacy and would leave the door cracked so she could trail me. During my showers she was also always faithfully lying on the bath mat, waiting on me.

Around the holidays, she had little patience for gift wrapping and would often sit right in the middle of all my wrapping gear, demanding attention.


And on the rare occasion that I would find myself baking in the kitchen, she was right there with me, often looking up at me with those concerned spaniel eyes, questioning how I found myself in such an unusual situation.


Early in our marriage, Ben established a "no dogs on the bed" rule at night because he simply cannot fall asleep with squirming dogs sharing his space. Annie abided by that rule until about 5 o'clock in the morning when she would put her front paws on my side of the bed, and I would pull her up next to me. As long as Ben was asleep, he had no problem with our early-morning smuggling and snuggling ritual. Five o'clock became 4 in the morning and then 3... she kept pushing the timeframe earlier and earlier. Eventually I reached a point where I would have no memory of pulling her into our bed; I would wake up and she would be snuggled up next to me.

As Ben and I would get ready for work in the mornings, Annie would often watch us as she lounged in our bed. She knew her rightful place.



Annie came into my life at a time that I really needed her, and as much as I love all dogs, the connection I had with her was special. One of the hardest parts of losing her is knowing I may never have a connection like that again.

Drifter and Annie were two good dogs, and I miss them both very much. It feels like our time with them wasn't nearly long enough, but I am thankful for the memories and the lessons from the short time we did share with them. They made our lives better.







I believe one of the best ways to honor the memory of a beloved pet is to open your heart to another animal in need, and Ben and I have since adopted two more canines into our family in honor of Drifter and Annie, but those introductions are for another time. We aren't replacing Drifter and Annie, but instead are adding more pawprints on our hearts.

Until we meet again at that elusive Rainbow Bridge...




Kimberly