Below is the journal for our self-guided trip to Seattle and Portland from September 21 through October 6, 2012. Besides the time we spent in Portland and Seattle proper, we backpacked for a few days in the Hoh River Valley in Olympic National Park, and spent time on and around Puget Sound and the Washington and Oregon coasts.

The journal is broken up into several different sections to make it a bit more manageable.

• Puget Sound and Strait of Juan de Fuca (September 21-23)
• Backpacking at Olympic National Park (September 24-26)
• Washington/Oregon Coast and Astoria (September 27-29)
• Portland Area (September 30 - October 1)
• Seattle Area (October 1-6)

We've tried to make the journal entries as compact as possible while still telling you some of the interesting things that happened each day. Hopefully, we've struck the right balance. If you'd like to slog through the entire set of pictures we took while on our trip (there are around 300 of them, split into several sub-albums), you can check out the Gallery page.