The sun was shining and there was a bright blue sky this morning, revealing the mountains of the Olympic Peninsula to us for the first time.  We were planning to drive to Hurricane Ridge in the National Park so were thrilled to see such great weather today.

The Park Rangers offered friendly advice about deer, bears and unpredictable drivers on the road up the mountain.  Though we saw deer a plenty, including the tiniest fawn, sadly, no bears put in an appearance.  The road was good and it was hard to imagine that we’d driven from sea level to 5700ft in less than an hour.

That meant there was snow.  Lots of it!  And some of us had not come prepared…

Fortunately, the paths were cleared and though it wasn’t exactly baking hot up there, the sunshine was beautifully warm on the skin.

The views were magnificent.

A few people were going on snow-shoe walks, others were carrying inflatable donut type sledges and some were clearly setting out for a day of high level activity.  I was pottering about in my sandals!

But hey, what did it matter?  We enjoyed our time there, feeling so pleased that we’d made it up to the summit before the cloud came in.  As we prepared to leave, we could see it billowing up from the valley below.

We made our way back down to Port Angeles, where we’d read about a sculpture trail at the Art Gallery there.  We arrived to find that the summer exhibition of students’ work had just begun, too.  This turned out to be the highlight – the work was superb and all three of us found plenty to fascinate us.

The sculpture trail was a different matter.  Imagining something akin to a particular sculpture trail we love back home, we soon realised that this one was not quite in the same league.

Some of the exhibits had seen better days

Others were a little scary.  We soon became a little bored and began to play

One artist had written some notes to enlighten us about the inspiration which led to the work

I’m not sure if it added to my enjoyment of the artwork or not.

From here, we found our way back to Port Townsend, but made a small detour to Dungeness to take a look at the longest sand spit in the US

This was a huge contrast to this morning’s mountains – here we were looking at such a flat landscape, it barely shows on the horizon.

What a day!