Port Angeles- British Columbia

The same day we left Seattle we headed up to Port Angeles. Our "Twilight" tour began there. I read "Twilight" much of the trip up to Seattle and it just so turned out timing wise that we read the chapter called "Port Angeles" as we headed to the city itself. When we got there we ate at no other than the resturaunt featured in "Twilight", "Bella Italia".

I had a handsome guy sitting across from me like the scene in the book, but the kids on either side of both of us kind of killed the romance. Good food! To our dissapointment they didn't have mushroom stuffed ravioli however. That sounded yummy. Tim asked the waitress if the book has brought more patrons to the resturaunt and she said they are just getting more people from far away. She said it was fun because lots of 12 year olds came and got their picture taken in front of the resturaunt. I kind of resented that, but I got the picture taken anyway.

The next morning we took the COHO Ferry to Victoria, British Columbia. The ferry ride was fun and very comfortable. Victoria is a beautiful city. The buildings definitely remind me of Europe. The main reason I wanted to come to B.C. was for the Royal British Columbia Museum. When I was 18 my parents and I took a trip to Washington and we spent a day in B.C. then too. We went to this museum and I was enchanted. I was enchanted again this time and so were my kids as I guessed they would be. The highlights were the Natural History exhibit and Modern History exhibit. There were a lot of neat realistic diaramas that made you feel you were in the great outdoors in the natural history exhibit. There was also an ocean room which made you feel like you were in a submarine with a periscope and portholes. There were also drawers full of ocean life specimens that you could look at under a magnifying glass.
My all time favorite, and the kids', was a life size diarama of Victoria at the turn of the century. You could look in the windows, walk into and upstairs of an old hotel,watch a silent movie in a little old time theater. There was also an old train station, that every so often had a sound and light effects that made it seem a train was passing outside.
We spent the rest of the day touring the rest of the city (the modern one, not the museum version.) It was a perfect warm, sunshiny day. It couldn't have gone better.
The next day we went to Hurricane Ridge in the Olympic National Park. It was absoluletly beautiful. The ride to the top was very dramatic with all the fog. The ranger said that the clouds that filled the whole valley to the very top were a rare sight. Many of the rangers who worked there had never seen it like this in all their years working there.
We went back to Port Angeles for Indian food for lunch. It was good but it wasn't as good as India Palace in Provo. On our way to Forks we stopped to take a hike to Marymere falls. It was a great hike for our kids too. Not difficult at all. Unfortunatly Sam did the same thing here as he did in much of B.C. Cry to be carried, but insisting only I carry him. He didn't win that battle. It was either walk or be carried by Dad. I carried him once in a great while though. It made things kind of hard the whole vacation.