Clallam County Fair & Hurricane Ridge

Yesterday was a lovely warm Saturday with not a cloud in the sky and I went to the peninsula to visit my Mom.  We drove out to Port Angeles, where I was born and raised, and went to the Clallam County Fair.  It brought back memories since I had spent a lot of time there when I was a kid in rabbit 4H.
I think we looked at every animal and walked through every building.  Here are some of the animals we saw (including a prairie dog!).

After the fair, we realized that we still had a lot of daylight hours left and it was still a beautiful day, so we decided to drive up to Hurricane Ridge in Olympic National Park.  It's not a very long drive, and on a clear day it offers some incredible views of the straits as well as the mountains. 
When we pulled into the parking lot and got out though, the deer stole the show.  There were deer EVERYWHERE, but right there by the sidewalk was a doe and her adorable twin fawns.  They quickly gathered a crowd, including a little girl who told her mom that their names were to be Fawn and Freckle.  Get ready to squee, here they are:

After I was finally able to tear myself away from absolute adorableness, Mom and I wandered over to the visitory center and I looked out at the snow covered peaks to the East. A lot more snow than you normally see this time of year.

After that, we went up the trail through the wildflower meadows and I had forgotten that there is a view of the Straits from the other side of the ridge.  I got one of Mom here, and when she sends it I'll post one of me in a hollow tree that I didn't really fit in.  Haha.

There were beautiful wildflowers everywhere.  Predominantly lupine (which is fine with me, since it's a favorite), but also these little white grassy looking flowers, a sprinkling of avalanche lilies and some bear grass-type flowers as well as others.

We were looking at this particularly thick patch of lupine when it sprouted a horned head.  A cute young buck with little prongy velvet antlers was laying in the flowers.  The flies were driving all the deer crazy, so he didn't lay still for long and posed for a picture.

On the way back down, we pulled out at an overlook where I remember we used to look for mountain goats when we drove up when I was a kid.  Another deer awaited us there, and she stuck her tongue out at us.  After looking at her, we looked at the view.... just as amazing as I remembered it.

I wish I had more of these deer running in this clip.  I was frantically trying to catch the big deer running, when my Mom said "here comes another one running like hell!"  It was the baby trying to catch up with the doe and by the time I focused on him he was just finishing some incredible leaps and slowing down to a fast spronging run.  It was still neat to see.