8/3/2017 - Olympic Game Farm

Thursday - I walked across the street this morning to the John Wayne Marina, and saw that it was low tide.  Saw lots of shore birds, but nothing else.  The land for this marina was donated by the John Wayne family because he liked to come here in his yacht and envisioned a marina here.  You could see the smoke above the water.

Our agenda today was the Olympic Game Farm, which worked exclusively for Walt Disney Studios for 28 years, filming here at the farm, as well as on the Olympic Peninsula and many different set locations.  This is a drive-through park, but some of the animals are behind fences or in cages, with access to open areas behind the cage.  But a lot of the animals roam freely, and you are allowed to feed those, with the whole wheat bread they sell here, so those animals come to the vehicles.  We saw a lot of peacocks, male, female and babies, along with a wide variety of other animals, and lots of BEARS!

Peacock

 Sika Deer

 Prairie Dogs

 European Fallow Deer

 Llamas

Yak

 Zebra

 Yak

 Kodiak Bears (Grizzlies)

 This one was taking a bath.

Lion

Wolf

 Elk

This one wanted to give me a kiss.  Yuk!

 Fallow Deer

 American Bison (Buffalo)

Here they come!

 Babies

Buffalo

This elk tried to get up close and personal with me.

 Camel

We couldn't sit still in the car very long or the animals would try to stick their head in the window.  I got buffalo spit on my window!

From there we drove around, stopping at a U-pick farm that also grew lavender.  These lavender fields are very pretty.  Sequim is the "lavender capital of North America" (didn't they say that about the fruit loop in Oregon???)   We missed their lavender festival by a couple of weekends, but are planning on hitting the blackberry festival in Joyce this weekend.   They were picking blackberries and boysenberries.  We didn't pick anything, but Joe did buy a pint of blueberries. 

 There are lots of flowers around town in hanging baskets and in the landscaping, and we often saw lavender plants incorporated in the scheme.  Very pretty.

There were also pianos placed around town -- brightly painted pianos.  I guess they are having some kind of piano event soon.

We drove around the countryside, checking out the farming, finding the bay a few times, then drove back to Costco for lunch and took the rest of the afternoon off.  I picked up a rotisserie chicken at Costco so we invited the Brundiges to join us for dinner, then finished the night with our card game.  Tomorrow we move back toward the west coast, to the town of Fork.  It was sunny and warm today, but not as hot as yesterday.