Washington is incredible. That’s the simplest way to explain it. Earlier this year, my team at work was tasked with creating a video for Populus Group’s annual incentive trip to hike Mount Rainier. It sounded like the (work) trip of a lifetime, so why not add on a week of vacation with Angela?

During my 9 days in my new favorite state (sorry California!), I got to experience three very different parts of Washington. First, Angela and I spent my birthday week hiking around Olympic National Park on the northwestern most point of the continental United States. While there was lots of driving across the gigantic national park, there were also tons of incredible views. We covered the Sol Duc Falls (via the Lovers Lane 6 mile hike), the Hoh Rain Forest, Rialto Beach, Lake Crescent, Hurricane Ridge, and Harbinger Winery, as well as a few of the many amazing restaurants in the quaint, charming town of Port Angeles.

From there we ventured over to Seattle. This included a few stops in the “hidden gems” of the small towns along the way before catching the ferry from Bainbridge Island into the Emerald City. We made the most of our three days in town with local beers, biking, friends, food, and kayaking. It’s hard to not stay active when all you want to do is take in the beauty that is Washington.

After Angela got on her flight home, it was time for the work week to begin. On our first day, my work team drove out to Mount Rainier to hike a bit and do some location scouting for our shoot the next two days. One thing that affected this trip was all the smoke blowing in from surrounding wildfires. While it’s easy to forget about on the east coast, these fires are impacting thousands of people every day, and this trip really brought it to light for us. With all of this smoke, Mount Rainier was very hazy on Monday, but it cleared up just in time for our shoot the next day!