Monday

We spent the day at the Sol Duc Hot Springs resort in Olympic National Park. We started the day with a hike to the Sol Duc waterfalls, but quickly realized that there was no way the kids were going to make the three-mile hike up to the springs. Jonah surprised me today. He seemed to really like the hike, much more than Genna. After he found himself a walking stick, he was a little trooper and had a great time walking in the woods. Genna didn't enjoy the hike as much, but after Noah started giving her challenges on the hike, such as jumping over logs and standing on rocks, she quickly started seeing all the adventures to be had in the forest.

After our hike, Noah and Jonah took a nap and Genna and I spent the afternoon in the hot springs. There were three hot springs soaking pools (i.e. giant hot tubs) that continually got their water from the natural springs. The pools were continually being filled by springs, so there were no chemical in the warm mineral water. Except for the sulphur smell, which we quickly got used to, the springs were fabulous. This was the perfect place in the park to bring the kids.

There's a family of deer in these trees to welcome us on our nature walk

The size of these pine trees was breathtaking.

This tree is covered in moss. Although we were not technically in the Hoh rainforest, we were quite close to it, which is why our hike looks like we were in the rainforest

I think that Jonah is leading here 

I think this is where we decided we'd have to shorten the length of our hike

I'm not sure why Genna is on the ground

Both Genna and Jonah learned what moss was on this hike

It was a beautiful walk

I didn't take this photo. It's from the Port Angeles photo blog (taken by "Jelvistar"), but it shows the hot springs. Each pool is at a different temperature, so you could have your choice of warm, warmer or hot.