Washington
- bradleighmartin
- Oct 4, 2021
- 4 min read
My fiancé and I decided to up and move to Gig Harbor, Washington for work. We spent two months here hiking, exploring, and trying all sorts of food!
On August 7th we drove from Oklahoma to Gig Harbor, Washington, where we would live for two months. Located across the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, this town of 10,000 people was the ideal place to live for us. This town is the perfect retirement community and gets quite the tourism. With all of the small boutiques, coffee, and restaurants to try, this place is always bustling with people. Our house had a private beach that we would walk to several times per week. We loved being able to watch the seals, dolphins, and osprey every time. You never knew what you were going to see at the beach that day! One of our first couple of days in Washington we headed to Snoqualmie Falls, located 52 miles from Gig Harbor. Pictured below, this 268-foot waterfall has been providing energy to a hydroelectric plant since 1898. This is a great free activity to do and the hike is only 1.4 miles long round-trip. There is also a river you get access to where you can hang out and eat lunch on the rocks. Next up was Rattlesnake Lake, located 9 miles from the falls. Near North Bend, this lake and recreation area is a day-use only area that includes picnic areas, the Rattlesnake Ledge trail, and a 111- acre lake.
One of our favorite trips was to Mount Rainier National Park. We ended up going twice while we were in Washington, the second time to do our engagement pictures. The park was located 85 miles from Gig Harbor, we made sure to pack enough snacks and water so we could spend hours or the day in the park. The park costs $35 to enter or $50 for the year pass, which we bought since we knew we would be coming again. We decided to go on Labor Day so it took us almost 30 minutes to wait in line to enter the park through the Nisqually Entrance and once in it took us 21 miles to reach the Bend and Snow Lake Trail. This trail is 2.5 miles round trip and it is not an easy hike it has large steps and is eroding which makes it hard to walk on and not sturdy. We ended up going to Bench Lake and not Snow lake, which was another mile ahead. Pictured below to the left is Bend Lake and it was gorgeous! Pictured below to the right is Reflection Lake with Mount Rainier in the background. This was a pull-off you could stop at to take pictures as you drove through the park. We spent over 4 hours in the park driving around and stopping at different lookouts to take pictures and explore!
I wish I could have documented all of the great food we ate while in Washington! Below are pictures of the food at Duke's Seafood in Tacoma, Washington, breakfast at Pacific Southern in Tacoma, and Little India Express in Tacoma. I, of course, did not take any pictures of the food we ate in Gig Harbor, but there were several places we loved to eat at. Duke's is one of our favorite seafood places that is along the pricier side. Every time we go we order the flight of four different samples of chowder with the Ragin Cajun Chicken corn chowder being our favorite! Pictured is the Bourbon Glazed wild salmon, stuffed Halibut, the Chipotle Salmon sandwich, and the chicken corn chowder. We stopped for breakfast one day at Pacific Southern, a restaurant with over 1,000 reviews on Yelp. They are known for their chicken and waffles but instead ordered the cinnamon roll pancakes and the breakfast plate. The cinnamon roll pancakes were amazing! We did not have anything bad at this restaurant I wish we would have gone again! The last place pictured is Little India Express, located in downtown Tacoma. This was a small hole-in-the-wall restaurant we found on Yelp using the reviews. We both ordered the tikka masala and it was delicious! For only $20 we had plenty of leftovers to take home. Two of our favorite places to go in Gig Harbor were the general store for the chai latte and sandwiches and JP's Hy Iu Hee Hee for all of their appetizers.
In July of this year, we decided to take a trip to Seattle for a weekend vacation. While there we went on a whale watching tour on the Puget Sound Express for $135 per person. This tour gives you 5 hours on the water with a café on board, the blueberry coffee cake is a must-try! The tour was great and the captain is very entertaining! We learned a lot and saw so many killer whales. I was so excited to finally see them in the wild and not in the zoo. I posted a couple of videos below that show killer whales!
I hope this blog can give you great recommendations on where to eat and fun activities to explore when visiting Washington! If you try anything out please let me know! I hope your experience is as good as mine! I have posted all links to websites and restaurants below. Hope you enjoyed reading!!
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