Sadly, we said goodbye to Montana and headed west.

Northern Idaho looked very similar with pine tree covered mountains and lakes.  I didn’t realize that Idaho goes all the way up to the Canadian border.  The mountains continued into Washington.

Spokane was smaller than expected, but looked like a nice city. 

As we traveled west the mountains began to flatten.  Looks like Washington has has a dry summer.

Crossing Washington’s central plains, we saw lots of farm fields, some with irrigation.  There were plenty of ponds, lakes and canals. 

As we saw more and more sagebrush, we realized, as we continued through central Washington that we were driving in desert territory.  Washington is beginning to harness the power of wind and we passed fields of windmills.

As we passed Mt. Rainier in the distance, trees appeared again.  First just evergreens…

… and then, as the mountains grew again, we were surprised to see deciduous trees like we’ve seen in the east.  Now Washington is starting to look like we expected it to.

We passed by Tacoma and Seattle, large cities with harbors, and headed for the Olympic Peninsula.

When we arrived at our campground on the beach, we all went to see the Pacific Ocean for the first time.  It felt alot cooler here and it soon became foggy.  The water is colder than the Atlantic and many beach goers were in sweatshirts.

Tomorrow, we head north towards Olympic National Park and Hoh National Forest.