Not that a vacation from our vacation was needed, but we opted to head back south after the Downhill and before the Super G and went to Pt. Townsend, WA to visit my aunt and uncle Pete and Kay. Pt. Townsend is a really cool community out on the Olympic Peninsula.
The most scenic way and probably the easiest too coming from the north was to take a ferry .
After going out for every meal and living in a hotel room the whole week before, it was great being in Pete and Kay's house complete with Bud the cat, homemade pie, freshly caught salmon, and really good company!
Uncle Pete and I got 9 holes in at the community course right down the hill from their house. I can assure you, my senses were on alert after being in the winter dead zone that is Jackson. All the colors, the smells, and sounds were and always are so heightened after transporting yourself from the black and white world of winter to a climate that isn't as harsh.
Liz, Chels, and Uncle Pete jumping for joy at the fact we got to stretch our legs after putting 3,500 miles on the truck this trip! It was a ton of truck time, but luckily we had good tunes, lots of gummi bears and awesome events to make it to.
After walking for a long, long ways, the lighthouse and the turn around point came into view. This necessitated a group fiver.
There were some friendly lighthouse keepers who were there volunteering that gave us a tour of the place.
The lighthouse compound, the reward for making it all the way out there! Just as we sat down at a picnic table to soak in the warmth, Uncle Pete produced some slow, smoked salmon from has backpack he had recently cooked up. It was a delicacy and devoured by the crew.
Ok, not nearly as much air as the women were getting in the Olympic Downhill, but almost!
We were racing the setting sun the whole walk back to the truck. It made for some awesome pictures and enduring memories! The Dungeness Spit is a very cool place, and now comes highly recommended by us!
The sun setting on our walking posse. If you look way off in the distance, you can see the very tippy top end of Washington.
Ahh yes, the infamous Dungeness Spit. All 11 miles plus of it round trip! It is hard to tell from this picture, but it goes out to the end, and then does a turn to the right towards the lighthouse.
Caught a sweet sunrise on the ferry from Pt. Townsend to Keystone and Whidbey Island en route back up to Whistler from Washington.
Deception Pass, one hell of a cool place on Whidbey Island
Lizzdogger modeling her good morning looks
Chels, Marco, and the proud Olympian's mom, Ren-dogger
Chels and Liz grew up skiing with Julia Mancuso (at Squaw Valley) who seriously kicked ass up in Vancouver winning two silver medals. We went over to stoked up after party the night she won the silver in the combined and shared in the party with a host of other Tahoe friends and fam. Way to go Jules!
Chels, perhaps looking like she might take Julia's second silver medal away from her and never give it back?
The mightily fused Marco Rocks/Julia is the shit fan clubs!
The day of the Super G ended up being beautiful, warm and sunny and we found a bunch of friends from Tahoe that hung and cheered with us!
I can only imagine what the extra baggage costs for these cowbells were! The Swiss are amazing fans that's for sure, any time a Swiss skier was on course, they started ringing these for his whole run and the sound drowned out the rest of the crowd!
Trevor and George Hjelte
Nate Holland, a US Team snowboarder and friend from Tahoe. He competed in the Snowboarder Cross earlier in the week but fell in the final heat...bummer!
Manny Osbourne-Paradis (Canadian racer and Marco's good bud) with Marco after the race
The scene
Later that night we booked it to go see the skeleton
Trev and I with Liz and our friend Jess in front of the lit track.
It was a pretty cool scene and made us all want to try skeleton out, but maybe at a little slower speeds...those guys were flying!!! It was hard to even get a pic as they sped by.
Ski day at Whistler/Blackcomb with Marco! Jess, in the pink hoodie is a local and was able to show us around which was awesome.
Another amazing day!
Whistler/Blackcomb is the most amazing place I have ever skied, you get two enormous and great ski areas for the price of one...all you have to do is ride the Peak2Peak tram between the two to get across to the other mountain.
Here is the Peak2Peak which kind of reminded me of something you could find in Europe. Aweseome times! Now back to real life.
