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Otherwise, there’s not much to talk about for Day 34 aside from some truck trauma (“it’ll be another two weeks and $2,000+”!) that resulted in me skipping the Important Hike so I could borrow my bro’s rental car (thanks again) and drive down the hill to where I could get some cell and internet service and thereby improve the situation slightly.

OTOH, we did work on this puzzle for good parts of the day:

It’s a trail map of the Jackson Hole ski resort for some reason.

The puzzle was a group effort of every adult inhabitant of Cabin 47.

The greater family also enjoyed a rousing game of scum (aka “butt-man” and any of a number of other names), in which I firmly established myself as the second-best player. IMHO. As such, I’m considering joining the professional tour.

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The best thing about the family reunion was how crappy the weather was. Made everything much more memorable. As the family discussed at length throughout the four days of festivities, mutual suffering breeds cameraderie like nobody’s business.

If you look closely enough, you can actually see the huddled golfers bonding!

• Doesn’t usually rain very hard in Washington, but it did on Thursday.
• Took us 3.5 hours to finish nine holes.
• My waterproof jacket was spectacular.
• My golf game was less spectacular.

And in case posts about abbreviated golf rounds have you wondering, my current hope is that I get back on the road on Saturday. Supposedly they’ll have my truck back to me on Friday. It’s *in writing* they’ll have it done Friday. Man. OTOH, the golf round was part of the originally planned trip, so you were gonna get a post like this for Day 33 regardless. Deal.

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Has the 48stateroadtrip shark-jumped? Probably. The major event on Day 32 was taking my parents out to dinner for their 50th anniversary. As exciting as that was as a participant, I don’t think it translates well into the blogosphere. But maybe, just maybe, if I were to go back in time and… no. There’s no chance.

I’d suggest something about my sister-in-law being paranoid for not wanting her face to show up on the blog, but then she’d probably have stored up some instance in which I did something paranoid, which would therefore make a hypocrite out of me. Again.

The boys’ side of the table. They’re not as odd as the photo makes them look — it’s mostly the lighting.

Ended up going to some Italian restaurant in Bellingham after our original plan of going to Abbotsford (Canada) was thwarted by a combination of my niece (purportedly) throwing away my sister-in-law’s passport and an eight-year period of unprecedented federal border paranoia that leaves us needing passports to visit the 51st state in the first place. As a result, sadly, no foie-gras.

• The chicken parmesan was merely okay.
• The lemonade required three packets of sugar before it was drinkable.
• Everyone else seemed to have ordered much better than I did.
• As for me, it was the first time I had to take ranitidine the whole trip long.
• I sat at the head of the table — or maybe the foot.
• Yes, this is the third straight food-related post.

Right. Shark-jumping.

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Never been to the Sol Duc part of Olympic National Park before. Now I have. Was pretty, the waterfall was unusual, and the weather was rainy.  I kind of prefer the spelling of droughth with the h at the end. Should’ve used it in the title.

We camped out by the rain forest. Started raining during the night some time — which you sort of expect in a rain forest, I guess. Drove out of there and tried — nearly failed — to get breakfast in Forks. We were, though, able to verify that the town’s economy is still mostly Twilight-based. If only the author had visited before writing the books. So lame.

The hike up to Sol Duc falls was only 0.9 miles from the trailhead, well within tourist range, even with the rain. But on the plus side, it was the first time all trip I got to break out my rain gear, which is really good at keeping rain out. Which you’d think would be true of all rain gear, but alas.

Highway 101 at 12:11:16 on August 10th.

Sol Duc Falls, with impressive triple-cascade action!

You know it’s a tourist when he’s carrying a golf umbrella onto the trail.

And then the loch ness monster came and ate our car.

I guess they’d had a long droughth up here. And it’s not that hard for me to look back at my 106-degree Yosemite photos and think about the two averaging out.

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With the truck still laid up, my dad was kind enough to let my brother and me borrow his Jeep and head out to Olympic National Park, which we now know was almost named Elk National Park. We didn’t see any elk or Greek gods while we were there, though. Maybe they should have gone with Option C.

I wanted to do this hike along the Hoh River in the Hoh Rain Forest, supposedly the greatest example of a temperate rain forest on earth. There were no toucans in the rain forest or three-toed sloths. Just a lot of trees and moss. Some rain. Went on it with my brother and three nephews with the goal being Five Mile Island (10 miles round-trip if you can believe it).

The rain forest is probably cooler than these pictures make it look, although I had fun trying to re-correct the colors in the photos to match my perception of reality.

And then the fairies came and performed a merry jig.

Still not sure whether the trees like having the mosses and ferns growing on them.

This one, for instance, seems a little irritated. Or maybe I’m reading too much into it.

Sam and Rick negotiate a deceptively difficult portion of trail.

What the trail looks like. Sort of. Depending on your monitor.

Mineral Creek Falls

A treacherous stream crossing.

We found troll scats under this bridge.

And then we saw a tree!

The Hoh River at Five Mile Island. Sadly, we witnessed no nuclear melt downs — heck, we couldn’t even find the containment facility (although that might have just been more evidence of failsafes working as designed).

Proof I was there.

Only one of my nephews (Ammon) and zero of my brothers made it to the island, and not without getting eaten alive by deerflies first, which only added to the richness of the experience — for both of us, really. Plus I got to use my first-aid kit for something. Finally.

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