Sequim Wildlife Park and Lavendar Festival

So my friend Chris Lucier is a professional musician and we go way back to junior high band. He lives up here and I've been wanting to see him play so when he posted that he was playing at a lavender festival, I put it on the summer adventure list. When I was recruiting friends to come with me (because I was nervous about driving onto a ferry for the first time) a friend told me I had to go to the wildlife park where they retire trained disney animal actors. Say whaaaaa?! And you get to feed them bread out of your car? DONE!

My cousin's wife (still my cousin?) came along for the adventure and to give me moral support for driving onto the ferry to Sequim (pronounced skwim). Brooke is amazing and I adore her. Her son Cam was born two weeks before M3 so she gets the struggle.

The lavender festival downtown was just kind of meh, but the lavendar lemonade and lavendar aoili was pretty good. Discovering the double stroller's front wheel was flat was no bueno, but we made do.

Purple Haze lavender farm was really pretty but not worth the cover charge when so many other farms were free.

Not pictured: All the bees pollinating these fields. So many bees.

M got some shears to cut his own lavender bouquet. He took it very seriously.

We had to kill a lot of time before Chris's band went on. I was hesitant about the lavender ice cream after trying a gross one at snoqualmie, but this was light and refreshing especially with the lemon.

They had lots of places to just sit and chill and if I didn't have three kids it would have been a wonderful place to just relax to good music with lavender in the air. 

Then the band got bumped to an hour later and we had to bail because the kids were DONE, especially the one year olds. But at least we got to say hello to Chris even if we didn't get to hear him play :( Plus we got to meet his sweet fiance.

The highlight of my entire summer ended up being this wildlife park experience. The pictures do not do it justice.One of my friends watched me freaking out in the video I posted and didn't get it until she went. After she messaged me that she now completely understands why I was kind of screaming. You don't really get how intense it is to have a buffalo filling up your car window until you've experienced it.

Llamas! Not alpacas, but still camelids.

This baby buffalo followed us a quarter mile. Most animals just wait for the next car, but this guy loved us.

Can you hear me yelling, "Put your head back in the car!"?

It was truly beyond amazing and I can't wait to go back.