Marina Cookout with Fjordlux and Helmsman Trawlers

My boyfriend and I were invited out to the Olympic Peninsula one sunny, early summer weekend to be part of an event joint-hosted by Fjordlux and Helmsman Trawlers, an oyster producer and a recreational boat company, respectively. Initially I pictured a bunch of people sitting at a table eating oysters and drinking wine - but it was a lively, trivia-filled cookout and shucking event combined with a speaker appearance that is now the source of 99.99% of everything I know and will ever know about oysters.

Below: a few favorite shots from the event and its gorgeous marina location -

Hurricane Ridge in Spring

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It’s a steep, guardrail-free drive to the top of Hurricane Ridge on Washington State’s Olympic Peninsula, so all spring my boyfriend & I watched road closure notices and the Ridge webcam to see when things would clear up enough for us to make the drive. And in May we eventually did - bringing a bike-laden Mustang with us.

Last time we were here together, we made the trip in a V6 rental Mustang…then a substitute for my boyfriends’s mirror-black, GT baby (above).

Walk walk fashion baby.

I bet the view from the visitor center is eerie at night.

Either I am a Disney princess or the deer are fearless here, because within 3 minutes of parking, this bold baby walked up and posed for photos before clip-clopping into the valley below and curling up in some shrubs.

Unintentional color coordination with a Penfield flannel.

There’s nothing out there quite like the cool blue tones & jagged peaks of Hurricane Ridge. And that crisp air! - wish I could bottle it up for a dreary Monday.

Wallace Falls State Park, WA

I frequently and greatly underestimate other people’s willpower and desire to hike up the side of a mountain on a sweltering hot weekend morning…so my boyfriend & I arrived at the wildly popular Wallace State Falls at a time when parking was so scarce, it easily added nearly a mile to our hike (we thought of our parking journey as a pre-hike hike).

Below: some views from the trail.