Hi All

As always I start with best intentions, intending to write a blog and upload photos from the place where we are actually staying.

A couple of things conspire to make this impossible, the amount of places we need to see in the time available and, frustratingly, the randomness with which our Fujitsu Siemens laptop conspires not to connect to the internet. The latter problem, given the amount of free wireless connections in this part of the USA, is particularly annoying!

Still, I am connected at the moment so stop rambling Ralph and do your blog.

The Olympic Peninsula, which includes a stunning mountainous national park, temperate rainforests and a beautiful coastline has been every bit as good as recommended by Paul & Meg Pinza, whom we met in Namibia over 12 months ago.

They live locally near Port Angeles/Sequim but sadly we weren't able to meet up (we gave them advanced notice and they were off to California and New York before we could blink an eye!) The temperate rainforests on the west side of the Olympic mountains were like nothing we have ever encountered, big old growth trees covered in ferns. They get as much as 15ft of rain here (reminds me of the UK!) but it was very hot and sunny when we visited so not much like a rainforest!

Things have picked up on the wildlife front, we saw our first bald eagles on the coast, and enjoyed close encounters with black tailed deer. No bears as yet, they are not as numerous here as in the Rockies, but maybe Alaska will deliver on that front? A cultural side event was a visit to Sequim Lavender Festival, never knew there was so much you could do with one plant, though I won't be rushing out to buy lavender lemonade in future!

From Olympic we had the option of the beautiful San Juan Islands or back to the mountains, and we chose the latter (Mt Rainier again) as we love mountain hiking and the weather remained superb.

After a stunning snow walk to 7,200 ft up Mt Rainier's volcanic flank (about halfway to the top) we drove north east to the North Cascades (yep, mountains again) where we stopped off at Rocky Reach Dam to watch salmon returning to spawn via a fish ladder with observation windows. After watching the equivalent of £1 million of John West tins swim by we ended up (via a Bavarian alpine village and an "authentic" wild west town) north of Seattle on the edge of the San Juan Islands.

Anacortes, gateway to the San Juans, is not that nice a place but has one superb attraction, boat trips to see wild Orcas, but more of that next time.