Married and All That Stuff

Greetings, blog world -- it's been a while and now I'm married. Go figure.

First off, the stress mentioned in the last post stuck around a little bit, but was mostly gone by wedding day -- by the time we got to the church looking awesome and Joe showed up, everything was dandy.

Photos on the front lawn of the church, followed by chatting with old friends while waiting for the wedding to start and then the wedding itself were all wonderful. Everything went off without a hitch .. I mean, except that I got hitched but that was planned ... and so on and so forth. If you want to see pictures, go visit Joe at snaptography.net

And now I'm going to tell you all about our honeymoon. OK, not all about it. But about some of it.

Pay attention folks, this part is interesting.

We started the trip at Lake Quinault, which is a couple of hours away from Tacoma, smack dab in the middle of the Quinault rainforest. For this sort of rain forest think: mossiness sans monkeys, but plus really huge trees.

This is the lodge where we stayed.

Now, on our way down to said lodge we saw a sign "world's largest spruce tree." Luke said "I dont care about a big tree." I said "world's largest tree? heck yes! how can we be near this giant tree and NOT see it." He agreed, so off we trotted.

But first we took some uber cute pictures and since this is my blog, Im totally going to make you look at them before I continue this atrocity of a giant tree story.

My husband and myself- - check out my totally awesome earings

Pretty view of the Olympic mountains and the Quinault river

Mountain Man Luke

Me. Looking at the tall trees.

Now, the thing about The Big Tree (they say) is that it's not so tall as it is big around. OK. So we are looking for a very round tree. Good to know.

Now, on day two of Honeymoon Bliss we were taking a little walk through the woods where we saw an awesome waterfall ...


So there we were, walking around, when we saw a sign (sadly, no photos of Ugly Deceptive Sign) that said "The Big Tree -- 2 mile" Woo! The Big Tree two miles left! And what's two miles when you are going to see The Big Tree? For serious. So off we went.

And went. And then the trail was blocked by giant branches. So we climbed around. And then there was a giant tree. So we climbed over it. And then there were more giant tress. And more. And then I got a spider on my shirt (this was like almost the last straw). And then Luke had a spider on HIS shirt (he didnt seem to care). And THEN we got to a really big log in the middle of the trail, and I asked Luke how far we had gone and he said "oh not even a mile." .. and it had been an hour of climbing over random logg-age ....

So I decided with no little consideration that we should turn around. But not before I sat on a big
tree in the way of the trail.

And then I took a bunch of pictures of all the forest crap covering the trail
Do we see a trail in this photo? Not so much. So you can understand our reasoning.

Now you may correctly imagine that on our walk of shame out of the Evil Blocked Trail that did not actually take us to The Big Tree I was Not Happy -- I mean, Amy? Defeated by a trail? No! Did the sign at the beginning of the trail bragging about The Big Tree say anything about the way being blocked by rubbish? No. What park ranger is slacking? Who decided this tree was the biggest anyway? And why would they advertise The Big Tree and then mock hikers by making it impossible to get to? why? Why? WHY?!

For the love.

Later that night, after mulling over these important questions for several hours, I stopped by the local mercantile to ask the informed cashier -- "for serious, what is up with that?" And SHE informed me (get ready ..):

We were not hiking towards The Big Tree. That was only A Big Tree, and the way had been blocked for two years, thanks to several giant storms. In fact, she had not heard of anyone ever making it to that sub par tree and that several people had been rescued from that "trail" over the last year.

Ah-HA!

Shocking, I know.

The ACTUAL big tree, she said, was down the road off a little paved path.

Hmph.

This is a good time to note the important distinction between the words "A," and "The." If I said that Luke was The Strong Man (as illustrated below)
... you would think that he was it, the end. But as we know, The Incredible Hulk is well, hulkier, so Luke should be called A Strong Man, not THE Strong Man.

The same sort of thing goes for the tree.

And so the next day we made our way to The Actual Tree.

Please not that this sign is not actually on The Tree.

And THAT, my firends, is The Big Tree.

We were shocked -- SHOCKED! -- by its size. Obviously, this was the correct reaction.

Now, the rest of the honeymoon is not nearly as interesting -- beach blah blah, hot springs blah blah blah, Port Townsend on the Sound blah blah blah, bed and breakfast blah-de-blah blah.

Pictures for you, nonetheless, and then I'll stop typing and leave you people alone.

On Luke's favorite Washington beach -- Beach 4. (cool name, I know).

Look at my rad sandals. Look hard. This is the last time you'll see them, um, EVER because I'm a moron and left them at the hot springs (oh yeah, no pictures of the hot springs themselves because Im stupid)

Now this is an important picture taken right before I almost died. This shot is at the end of a very steep, mostly foggy and scary drive on a road that was definitely NOT on the map -- yet we drove it anyway. And then as we were going down the mountain on some very treacherous pebbles Luke was going waaay too fast and totally slid the car around and that is when I almost perished. And then I screamed. And then I hit him with the map.

To make me feel better about my near death experience we stopped and got a burger at a little joint in Forks. Burgers = amazing. Their pie? Not so much.

Luke at the Sol Duc Falls on the Sol Duc River near Sol Duc Hot Springs.

Crescent Lake

At Hurricane Ridge outside Port Angeles -- waaaay cool views.

Very chilly at Port Townsend

The B&B we stayed in last night.

Tomorrow we head out to go white water rafting before hitting Boise to pick up all our cool Wedding Swag that my parents carted there for us. Monday we head back with a stop for dinner with Liz Napoli and then -- thank the Lord -- we are done.

Phew.