Washington State - Summer 07

I went to Washington state for my climbing vacation during the last week of June (6/23 - 7/1). As usual, we estimated more time than we needed, this time we have 2 extra days to kill. I was hoping we would go to Oregon to check out My Hood. But since we all had a bit too much to drink on Thursday night celebrating our failure :-) we opted to have a shorter ride to Mt St Helens instead. I wasn't too happy about that, but the majority rules.

It was raining on and off the whole drive to Mt St Helens. Once we arrived at the Johnston Ridge Observatory, the rain was dying down but the thick clouds were lingering around covered the view of Mt St Helens.

We drove back to Tacoma area that night and spent most of the next day at Northwest Trek Wildlife Park, a wildlife refuge kinda place. We saw many animals there. All the carnivors were confined in a fenced area. Herbivores live freely in the 723-acre park. It was very cool. I am never a brave person, the only way for me the enjoy seeing these beautiful animals without freaking out was to see them in a controlled environment, so the wildlife park sounded like a good place to visit. The guide did mention that some animals in the park were rescued and adopted by the park, but I'm not sure about the others. Hopefully none of them were captured from the wild and shipped here for the enjoyment of wimps like me. Sorry. Here are the rest of the pictures.