Ferries, flying fish, and fall colors

The countdown is on... tomorrow is October 1st and my contract is up at the end of the month. How is time flying by so fast?! We could easily stay here for longer (I'm sure we could say that about every location). There is just SO much to do! We want to hike all the hikes! All of them!  We've been blessed to make new friends through Will's work (hey Cameron and Ashley!) and let me tell you, it makes such a big difference! Yes, we have each other, and we get along so well and spend endless amounts of time together quite effortlessly. But to have friends, a community, a familiar face, is just so nice. My dear friend from Nashville, Whitney, has been such a joy and so have our family friends, Ben and Anne. It's nice knowing even just a handful of people in this great big city. It gives it more of a feeling of home, and if we can find little bits and pieces of that wherever we go, I"d be pretty happy. We've been trying to fit as many things in as we can (how have we not been to the Space Needle yet?!) especially since we're down to our last month. Here are a few of our more recent explorations: Bainbridge Island Naturally, we HAD to take a ferry while living here. So what better place to go than a lovely little island? 

Leaving Seattle!

Exploring all the marinas. So many amazing sailboats!

Such a gorgeous view...

Pike Place Market (again) We knew we needed to come back at least once or twice. And I'm so glad we did! This place gets better every time! We finally found the right fish market where they throw the fish (classic). It was just so fun exploring, listening to the street musicians, and enjoying the sunny day (it actually does NOT rain every day here, believe it or not). 

Look closely and you'll see the flying fish :)

The famous Gum Wall. Cool/eww. Ha!

But seriously, that's just impressive!

Mount Catherine This was what we like to call our "surprise hike." We set out to do a different hike, but could not find the trailhead for the life of us. We finally found what sort of looked like one, so we parked on the side of the dirt road and just started hiking. We figured we could always turn around. But we're so glad we didn't! A small part of the draw for us to come to the PNW in the fall was for the gorgeous fall colors. This trail definitely delivered! It was a pretty foggy day but that made it all the more beautiful and mysterious.

What is normally vast space filled with great mountain views... better or worse because of the fog? I'm not sure.

Using a rope to climb up the last stretch. 

We also accidentally found our first ever Geocache! Yay! 

Hubby leaving a note in the Geocache notepad. Also, what's that metal door doing there? We weren't sure, but it looks pretty cool.

I loved this moss!

Our trusty VW. She's the best...