This frozen bee completely surprised me but I took the opportunity to kinda poke him (nicely of course!) and check him out! Fun and random - apparently the whole swarm will become docile just before transporting the Queen to a new hive and there's some crazy videos out there of people scooping them up and just holding handful of chill bees. Pretty neat. There was plenty of toads in the creeks and I found this little mini mini one! And I have to admit, I love this photo below! If you look closely you can see mini frog, chillin, staring out across his entire universe.
One thing I've learned to keep an eye out for on the trails up here are slugs! I came across these two lovers on the trail and while it's obvious they are snail sexing, I was certainly intrigued by exactly what was really going on here. I managed not only to answer my own questions, but I also learned quite a few other things about slugs. As it turns out snails/slugs have incredibly interesting and also somewhat mysterious sex lives, for example some species practice 'sadomasochism'. For all the details I found 
Running through a field of daisies is preeeeetty wonderful. The daisy field, with Lake Crescent in the background, was alongside the trail to Marymere Falls; the payoff far succeeded our payout on this hike. The hardest part of the hike was a few stairs and one final biiig step up over the root of a large tree (seen below with the falls in the background). My other favorite flower blooming at lake level are Foxglove, they're so vibrant and beautiful!
Hurricane Ridge was just as breathtaking as I remember it. I was so excited to explore more of the ridge this trip since the snowmelt was much further along than the first time I visited and wildflowers like Avalanche Lily and Phlox were in full bloom alongside the trails. The air was so incredibly crisp and clear that at one vista we could see over the Strait of Juan de Fuca, to Vancouver Island (Canada!) and the mountains beyond that...I like to think that one of those was Whistler. 
I realize this was a serious photo dump stretched into a few posts but I can't help it! What an amazing place! I'm so thankful to have shared this trip with good friends and I can't wait to go back - which needs to be now!!!
While we were just hanging around on the beach, all of a sudden this little deer popped out and made for the tide pools! Definitely something I've never seen before and I'm really curious what he was munching on out there!
On the way back we crossed a stream and decided to follow that until it led us to this little freshwater (freeeeeezewater!) lake. I say lake because it was freakishly deep and definitely would have been awesome to jump into had it not been so cold! "You didn't expect me to be jumping into every body of water we came across!" No, I definitely did not and our guest definitely swam in here, burr!!! I posted up on these logs were completely grown over with grasses and flowers, this one ^ was like a faerie pride rock, hee!
At La Push beach there are some larger, closer sea stacks and I just had to know if they could be accessed! I walked all the way to the tip of the jetty to determine this - and when I say walk, I mean I had to hop from rock to rock to log to rock like a spazzy mini Mario. The other awesome thing was that every crevice of the jetty was covered in starfish!! AHHH!!! Don't worry I restrained my photo dump. 
