Olympic, Seattle, and a whole lot of Greyhound!

So we took the ferry from Victoria to Port Angeles very tired and weathered from a "graffiti" themed birthday party in Victoria, which was, needless to say very fun. Christine bought Katie and I some shirts for it which are now decorated with doodles, signatures and notes from all the amazing people we hung out with in Victoria, as well as some icing from the penis-shaped birthday cake they had baked.
We got into Port Angeles, found a hostel and undertook a very strenuous hike through the town. The hostel was called Thor Town, it was a a big red house with a lovely front yard over taken by chickens wearing friendship bracelets made by the little girl, Pluma, who lived there, as well as many giant sunflowers. It was located riiight by the water and a mile away from Olympic national park! amazing!! We hiked around the second growth rainforest and got a ride with a very nice couple we met at the hostel to the top of the mountains at hurricane ridge. The view was amazing! It was nuts seeing rainforest vegetation slowly change into a sub-alpine zone at the top of the mountains with clouds hanging low in between peaks.
On our second day, KC came and picked us up from the hostel in a Olympic National Park school bus and brought us to his dad's property which is actually a reforestation project as well as a Christmas tree farm. We stayed in a large log cabin built by his parents before he was born. Such an amazing home.. high ceilings covered in posters of everything from collages to Einstein, Ghandi, feminism, anti-war movements... dogs (one which was 15 years old with barely any fur left) and cats wandering around, no running water within the household, two solar panels to run the stove and a few light fixtures, delicious organic vegetables grown in the garden and mushrooms from the forest surrounding it. Five people live in that house, all from different places and backgrounds, loving each other and working on the farm. We walked through a field to a giant cedar and 6 of us proceeded to climb it until we were all perched at different hieghts in the tree and just sat, breathed the fresh air and talked for a long time. They started up the little hand-built sauna in front of their house, by the pond, which was run by a small wood-fire oven surrounded by sheet metal. They burned cedar and splashed the metal with water and eucalyptus oil and the relaxation and cleansing heat was very much welcomed by our bodies. In the morning they took us on a hike through the woods to a small river. The forest was so beautiful, Ive never seen anything like it. The flora and fauna is so different than in the east that I hardly recognized anything I saw. Ferns, alders, giant cedars, birds whose songs I had never heard before, and mushrooms which they identified as we walked along. We finally got to to the river which was clear and very cold as it ran down from the mountains. I played with the two dogs, Lucky and Medusa, throwing sticks in the water for them to catch for a long time until we headed back toward the house.
We caught a few city transit buses and a ferry to get to Seattle which cost us a whopping 3 dollars! Once in Seattle, Hans and his roommate JD picked us up from downtown and brought us to their apartment, where we met their other roommate Mike. They were very welcoming and fed us wine and tortilla chips as we sat in the living room smoking their hookah and getting to relax from our full day bus journey. Seattle is a really cool city, very trendy and filled with coffee shops (who would have guessed???). We explored it walking from one end to the other, and later Hans and his roommates brought us to Volunteer Park where we climbed to the top of a water reservation tower which is the highest point in Seattle, and got a great view of the city, with the Space Needle in plain sight. The next morning we had to say goodbye and headed off to the Greyhound station, to embark on our journey to Arcata.
Now, for some reason, Greyhound decided to have us go from Seattle to Portland to San Francisco and back up to Arcata. Why? WHo knows. All we knew was that this amounted to a 35 hour bus ride, one of the most frightnening and stressful events of our lives! Turns out, once you leave Canada, taking the bus is ridiculous. It was filled with homeless or otherwise very sketchy characters, so we sat as close to the front of the bus as possible and avoided contact with anyone haha
We left Seattle at 1:15 pm to arrive in Arcata the next day at 10:30 pm. At around 11 pm or so, some very rude lady sat behind Katie and I and wouldn't let us recline our seats. She actually made this happen by hitting the back of our seats really hard and yelling "put your seats up!" while we were asleep. Needless to say, neither of us got very much rest that night, and made us even more edgy than we already were. Finally we got to San Francisco at 9 am with a 5 hour lay over. We had made one friend (the only other sane person o n the bus), so we headed to a sunny park where we shared the food we had in our three backpacks and laid in the sun for a few hours, which was exactly what we needed. It was very very warm and we happily took off most of the numerous layers we had been wearing and let the sun warm us up.
Back on the bus we went, for the last 6 hours of our journey. We made each other hair wraps which took our minds off of our tiredness and once again sketchy environment, and before we knew it, we were in Arcata. We got a ride to the Super 8 motel, warmed up a can of vegetarian chili and went to sleep.
In the morning we endulged in the continental breakfast offered by the motel (packaged danishes, english muffins, watery coffee and old cereal) before getting on the bus that would take us north through Redwood National Park (finally!!!!). Our jaws dropped at the sight of the giant trees, hills, and the beautiful fog which covered everything. We checked into the youth hostel which was located just across the street from a beautiful rocky beach on the ocean, and gladly socialized with a California Conservation Corps who were all staying at this hostel. We went for a walk on teh beach and played in the (very cold) water playing frisbee and running at the waves and away from them. We walked back to the hostel with our pants soaking wet, hair drenched, and spirits rejuvenated! We cooked a delicious meal, and relaxed the rest of the night with all of our new friends on the beach where we could see every star with the milky way in plain view (we saw about 60 shooting stars within an hour!).
The next morning was spent hiking through the beautiful surrounding forest and finding Hidden Beach, where, we played in the water and saw a sea otter!!! We were reluctant to go actually swim because we were informed by the people at the hostel that Klamath has the highest concentration of Great White Sharks on the Pacific coast! yikes!!!
Now we are in Arcata staying with Adam, Annie, KO, and Matt. They took us to a circus show put on by their school last night which was very... interesting. We had an amazing pancake, french toast, fresh blackberries, yogurt and apple breakfast on the grass outside and we are now making ginger ale before going to the beach!!!!