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This years summer vacation brought us to the American Northwest. First of all, it was a surprise in multiple ways for our kid - it did not know where we are going until we arrived at the gate for the final flight in Frankfurt. It did not know that we are going to visit it's favorite mountain. And it did not know that there will be a concert of a band it likes.

We did plan this vacation around three basic parameters:

• The kid wants to see Mount St. Helens
• There is a The Piano Guys concert in Seattle
• We want to go on a #PGBackPacking trip

Everything else we've seen, visited, and experienced is a nice add-on.

The third day of our #PGBackPacking trip was the day we hiked back to the cars, and returned to our home or hotel in Bellingham.

As described yesterday, we had to slightly change the #PGBackPacking plan. Originally we had planned to hike to Monte Cristo, and from there to Silver Lake. Stay at the lake over night, and do a day hike to Twin Lakes.

When we arrived at Monte Cristo, it became clear that we won't make it to Silver Lake in daylight. We decided to camp in Monte Cristo, and hike to Silver Lake and Twin Lakes the next day. Turns out that was the right decision to do.

At some point last year, Joshua and I discussed a backpacking trip. The idea of #PGBackPacking was born!

After considering our options, the available days and the physical fitness of our team members, we settled with an old ghost town about 60 km east of Everett: Monte Cristo.

Originally we had plans to go to Vancouver BC from Seattle, but we cancelled this part in the last moment. Instead we opted for a countryside tour to Bellingham, and staying an additional day in the hotel and at the pool. From Redmong we followed the WA-9 and left it near Everett, where we followed the Marine Dr along the coast. In Conway we switched over to the Fir Island Rd heading west, and from there on the Best Rd heading north. Eventually this got us on the scenic WA State Route 11, which leads directly into Bellingham.

After just walking around in Portland the previous day, for today we are scheduled for another highlight of this vacation: a The Piano Guys concert in Seattle/Redmond.

When we organized this vacation, we had three basic parameters:

• location wise: Mount St. Helens must be included
• time wise: The Piano Guys are in Seattle on this day
• community wise: Backpacking and hiking with people from the PostgreSQL community (#PGBackPacking)

After being on the road for almost a week now, Portland was supposed to be restful. Of course it ended up in walking around 13+ kilometers, finding Starbucks shops, a few Geocaches and a huge number Ingress portals ;-)

Mount St. Helens the day before was certainly one of the highlights of this vacation. We are determined to see the mountain again today, but not that close. And we had a different agenda for today: visit the Ape Cave, a famous lava tube just south of Mount St. Helens. Originally we planned to go all the way to the Windy Ridge Viewpoint, but given that it is a 3 hours drive from Vancouver, WA (where we stayed over night), we skipped this part and decided to spend more time at the Cave site. Totally worth it!

Getting some rest in Olympia was good, but the kid couldn't sit still any longer - Mount St. Helens was finally on! If you ask the kid, it can probably tell you more about volcanos in general, and particularly this one than you might ever learn in a lifetime. Therefore visiting Mount St. Helens was supposed to be one of the highlights of this vacation.

After doing the whole Twilight tour in Port Angeles, Forks and La Push, we arrived for a day of relaxation in Olympia. As the kid told us, that's the Capitol City of Washington. Therefore, and because it was not far away from the hotel, we decided to visit the Capitol.

Going to Washington (State), Andrea asked if we can visit the places where the Twilight novels take place. Basically Port Angeles, Forks, La Push and Olympia. That's too much for one day, so we settled on a roundtrip around the Olympic National Park for one day, and Olympia for another day. That is also the reason why we travelled to Bremerton the day before: just to shorten the trip for today.

One day adaption to jetlag is enough ;-) Therefore we left Seattle and headed to Bremerton for the night. But how to spend the day? Well, there is the Museum of Flight, which I discovered on an earlier trip to WA. And searching the Internet, I found the Chihuly Bridge of Glass in Tacoma.

Our first full vacation day was more or less for relaxing, and recovering, and getting rid of the jetlag. Therefore we stayed right in Seattle. Our plan was to walk down to the Great Wheel and to the Aquarium, what we more or less managed to do - with some detours.

After figuring out that our vacation will bring us to Seattle, I checked the Geocaching map for potential caches in the area of our hotel. Sure enough, some nice virtual caches and regular caches popped up, but also one named “Geocaching HQ” - wait, what?