The next day we slept in....heavenly...and then ate breakfast and headed out to Lake Cushman. When I checked in the day before this was the place that the lady recommended we go.
I actually don't even know the name of this river that we crossed over to start our hike!
Again we couldn't have asked for better weather. It was so gorgeous, but it also wasn't hot so that was nice!
The sign at the start of the trail! The Rapid Loop Trail is 1.9 miles
A few yards into the trail there was a side trail that led us to this big cedar tree that had fallen over years ago. It's so crazy huge!!!
Along the trail we got lots of beautiful views of the white water.
I thought these trees were so interesting how the roots were just crawling over the rocks and reaching to the ground. Michael thought that maybe at one point in time the dirt was up over the roots and water probably washed it out.
We had to walk past this rock...the picture doesn't do it justice at all. It was massive! It was a little freaky having to walk by it!
Halfway through the Rapid Loop Trail there was another trail that was called Four Streams. We decided it would be fun to hike that as well. It was 1.2 miles out and then 1.2 miles back.
After we made it back to the Rapid Loop Trail we got to walk across this awesome bridge.
The second half of the Rapid Loop trail wasn't as exciting as the first half, but there were some more cute little streams.
Also there were a couple fun bridges that were made out of logs that fell over the streams.
When we were almost at the end of the trail there was a section that had fallen away so they have to reroute the trail. We wandered down the other trail so see what happened and that's when we got to see the bridge down the stream that we crossed over when we started our hike.
On the drive back down from Lake Cushman I got some nice shots of the lake.
At one point on the lake there was a huge rock that had a rope so people could climb up it and then jump off it into the lake. There was a girl standing at the top, but she was too freaked out to jump.
On our way up I had seen a sign for a dam so we turned off on that road and checked out the dam. I wish we could have walked out onto it, but it was still fun to see.
From Lake Cushman we drove north to find a the Murhut Waterfall. It was down this awful dirt road that had tons and tons of huge potholes. I was so freaked out by the road too! I have a serious fear of being in a car and plummeting off the edge of a cliff while driving. I pretty much suck in all the air in the car and start climbing to the other side...as if that side of the car won't go over the cliff too. I know it's not logical, but who ever said fears were logical!
The hike to the falls was 3/4 of a mile and it was actually harder than any of the hikes we did at Lake Cushman. Lots of inclines! I think it didn't help that we had already hiked over 4 miles that day. For the drive down in order to save whatever dignity I had left I decided to turn on my Frozen soundtrack that my mom had just bought me and I sang the songs from the movie with my eyes shut the whole way down. It was SO much better than the way up. I was able to focus on the songs and I could visualize what was going on in the movie when I was singing that song and I didn't get scared once on the way down!
After we got back to the cabin we ate dinner at The Pub that's on the property. They had live music and the food was excellent and half the price of the Alderbrook Resort! We also got to enjoy the hot tub one more time.
The next morning...our last day we just took our time getting ready. We didn't have to check out until 11 so we knew we could go slow. We had wanted to take the kayaks out one more time, but when we woke up it was cloudy. I wasn't really interested in being out on the water and getting cold when all I brought was a light coat.
After checking out we headed off to find another waterfall and the High Steel Bridge. We had to drive on a couple different forest service roads, but we found it. What's amazing to me is the fact that we were out in the middle of nowhere and there were still at least 20 other people there to check out the bridge too.
The bridge was spanning this canyon and it was so high...of course as you can imagine there were some freak out moments. To see how high it was Michael spit over the edge and it took 10 seconds for it to hit the bottom.
We didn't stay too long, but it was breathtaking.
On our way to my parents house we stopped for lunch at California Tacos in Olympia. It was one of those taco trucks. We had never eaten from one of them, but the reviews were great and the food was yummy! We swung by the capitol building and found ourselves in the middle of a memorial for firemen. We made one last stop at the movies in Puyallup and saw Mom's Night Out. It was cute, funny and a little annoying at times, but overall entertaining! Then it was off to pick up the kids after being away from them for 3 whole days!
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