Day 2

We rolled out of bed the next morning and heeded the kids' call for some serious fun, ASAP! We learned a while ago not to shun the cheesy tourist attractions. One of the highlights of a trip to south Florida was Monkey Jungle, a fun trip to South Dakota was made that much more fun by a stop at Flintstones Bedrock City, and our wonderful tour of the Oregon coast a couple years back included a fun detour to Wildlife Safari. So, we packed up the camera and drove to the Olympic Game Farm, where many Walt Disney live-animal movies were filmed back in the day, including Grizzly Adams. Now it functions primarily as a home for retired animal actors and a whole herd of hungry and slobbery hoofed creatures.

No one is going to mistake the Olympic Game Farm for a Sanctuary, and PETA wouldn't probably give the place a seal of approval but if you like yak spit or bears that wave and catch pieces of bread in their mouths, It's a must-see. The kids had a blast (although the sight of a fully-extended bison tongue coming into the car to retrieve a piece of bread on her outstretched hand nearly did A in. She was terrified. All in all, it was really fun and interesting and the kids came away from it wanting a herd of white fallow deer of our own.

Then we had lunch (after a thorough hand washing... bison spit = yuck!) and decided to take a drive to see some water. Entirely by chance, we ended up at Salt Creek County Park. It was the perfect place for us to walk down the rocky shoreline, check out the tidepools, and get a nice view of Crescent Bay. We met a nice family from Florida who had just returned from a week of camping in British Columbia (freezing their butts off thanks to a cold front that brought some decidedly non-shorts-weather to the Olympic Peninsula as well).

After that, we stopped off at the Olympic National Park headquarters in Port Angeles and got some suggestions from a volunteer for nice hikes around the park. Then it was back to the cabin to make dinner and get some sleep before a long (although we had no idea how long) next day of driving Highway 112 to Neah Bay and the Makah Reservation.