Boy howdy, guys. Boy actual howdy. I’ve been to the Northwest once before, on another sprawling roadtrip some years ago. That time, I visited in the dead of winter and still fell madly in love, so visiting in the summer was a bit like falling in love with Leonardo DiCaprio in What’s Eating Gilbert Grape and then going to see Titanic. (For all of you out there under 30 — I tried to come up with a more timely analogy, but it led me down a dark Internet hole of what young people are into these days, so you’re on your own.)

What I’m trying to say is that it’s goddang beautiful up here. We drove through towering pine forests lush with green undergrowth, misty fields where fire-ravaged trunks pricked up from the grass like gravestones. The seasides were cradled by strands of black rocks, waves crashing against them in foaming white gales.

The Northwest has a reputation for being terminally overcast for much of the year, and I’m sure this is true — although I suspect the locals may exaggerate to protect their already overcrowded wonderland — but the worst we encountered was a dreamy mist that usually cleared by afternoon. (Which was fortunate, because we were usually too lazy to set up a rain fly.)

We explored Astoria, where the Goonies was filmed, and meandered along the Northern coast of Washington, biding time until we caught the ferry to visit my aunt in Vancouver Island. We spent an afternoon in Port Townsend, a charming, cozy little peninsula town where we got to watch a beautiful wooden boat being constructed in a nautical workshop. We explored Port Angeles, where we wandered a long, narrow moraine that stretched into the sea like a crooked finger, the fog so thick it seemed to mirror the still grey of the water.

Finally, we set up camp for a few nights in the Olympic National Forest, which we easily agreed was one of the most beautiful places we’d camped so far. The trees were so thick it was impossible to tell whether the white orb blazing through the trunks at night was a full moon.

We would have gladly camped there for days, or just given up our human cards permanently and been forest elves, but the next adventure beckoned. We were about to complete our trajectory up the Western coast to my aunt’s home in Vancouver Island, which had begun to take the shape of a mythical castle at the end of hero’s quest as we persevered through the ups and downs of life on the road.

So at long last, we hopped on the ferry at Port Angeles and made our merry way towards the sea.

Onward to the land of politeness and poutine!