August 10, 2013: Olympic National Park:
Rather than stay in the city, we decided to visit nature and set out for Olympic National Park which is west of Seattle. We used our car's GPS to go to the park. Not knowing about ferries, the GPS system routed us far south of Seattle through Takoma eventually taking us through Poulsbo, the Danish city we had visited the day before! Obviously this stole a couple of hours from the time we could spend at the park, so we had to decide what to do with our limited time there. We ended up taking the drive to the top of the mountain range, a very good decision. The views of snow covered mountains were spectacular:

Olympic National Park

Olympic National Park

Olympic National Park

Olympic National Park - note snow in foreground

From the viewpoint, we were also able to see lots of wild animals grazing in the fields near the viewpoint:

Deer grazing at viewpoint -- this one looks like she's close to delivering a foal

 
Since we had to return to Seattle to go to dinner with my Korean student, we had to leave early in order to make the ferry in Poulsbo which we had taken the day before. We arrived at the ferry in the nick of time - no sooner had we arrived when they were guiding cars onto the ferry. Here's a picture of Poulsbo (I think) as we left the island:

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view from ferry leaving Poulsbo

We also got to see the Seattle skyline again:

Seattle skyline from ferry

After leaving the ferry, we headed straight to Bellevue, the location where we were to meet Robin and Joseph Park for dinner. On the way, I got a picture of the Seattle Union Station building:

Seattle's Union Station

Since Bellevue is on the way to our hotel, I knew where to drive. After a short drive, we arrived at the restaurant to meet Joseph and Robin Park. We discussed the things that had occurred to each of us since 1975, the last time I had seen him. Joseph is a unique person -- he is one of a few flintknappers who crafts knives out of obsidian. Interested groups from all over the world have paid for him to go to their countries to teach them how to flintknap. Joseph also owns a farm and has many animals to raise. His house was built in the 1800's (I think) and what they live in was at one time a barn. Another of his occupations is that of a falconer. So, you can see that he is extremely talented in areas that one has little exposure to normally. After a nice meal, Ruth and I said our farewells and returned to our hotel for a rest before heading back south the next day.