The Sisters’ Trip (and Tom)
September 21 - October 1, 2026
Somewhere around June of 2026, my wife and her sisters started chatting about doing a “Sisters Trip” out to the Pacific Northwest. Her oldest sister and had gone to Seattle with us and then we all went on to Fairbanks, Alaska last fall for a family wedding and the other sisters thought that Washington looked, in Debbie’s words, “Amazing!” With very little push from us, the girls decided to let us come up with an itinerary between the state of Washington of mostly places we had not seen and into Canada to explore Vancouver. And then they invited me.
The sisters at Hurricane Ridge in the Olympic National Park (from L to R, Debbie, Tom, Penny, Chris, & Pam).
So, Penny and I put on our thinking caps and decided to break the itinerary into three sections with three nights at each stop: Tacoma because it made for a good jumping point to Mount Rainier and since we had not explored Tacoma, on the advice of an ex-student now travel writer who lived near there was to skip Seattle and come check out Tacoma. Our second stop was in the Port Townsend / Port Angeles area with an AirBnB at the foothills of Olympic National Park which made for easy access to Mount Olympus. And, finally, with some brand-spanking new passports in a couple of hands, we were going to cross into Vancouver, Canada for a big city experience.
Plans were made, AirBnB’s rented, airfare and rental car paid for and we were ready for the sisters to go on some adventures in Washington and Vancouver!
Tacoma, Washington
September 21-22, 2026
On Monday, September 21st, we all headed to Cleveland, OH for a direct flight from Cleveland Hopkins International Airport to Seattle, WA on Alaska Airlines as it was one of the only direct flights we could find for a decent price. We landed in the evening at SEA-TAC, picked up the rental car and headed to our AirBnB near the University of Puget Sound. The area was filled with incredibly cute Craftsman Bungalows, the neighborhood was very quiet and safe, and our AirBnB was a nicely restored Craftsman with four-bedrooms and two baths that worked out great for the group!
On Tuesday we had our lazy morning of coffee and breakfast then everyone did the shower thing and by noon we were ready to head to the mountains! Mount Rainier was the destination of the day and hitting up one of our favorite Italian restaurants on the was back was on the menu. We checked the webcams in the park before leaving to ensure it wasn’t too cloudy and hit the road in our land yacht (a Ford Explorer Max Platinum with far too many buttons to play with).
The Sunrise entrance to the park we had done before was closed due to wildfires, so we went to the Nisqually entrance on the Southwest side of the park. Because I am a veteran, I have a lifetime pass to all National Parks so we get in for free as do all the people in the car! We still drove up to Sunrise on the way out, but only the campground access was open. After cruising around the park, we hit the Paradise Visitor’s Center only to find that clouds had moved in and the mountain was hidden. But that did not stop our enthusiasm for driving around the rest of the park and taking photos.
At one point we saw a bunch of people grouped up taking photos behind us and when we looked behind us, the mountain had peeked out of the cloud layer just long enough for us to get a few photos of the top of the mountain. If you have not seen Mount Rainier, it is truly awe-inspiring as are the vistas from different points along the road of waterfalls and rivers.
On the way back to Tacoma, we stopped in the town of Enumclaw for a restaurant we had literally tripped across on our last trip to Rainier that turned out to be one of the finest Italian restaurants we’ve eaten at! So it was back to Enumclaw and to Il Siciliano Ristorante Italiano for some delicious pasta.
