I hate that Valentine's Day is in February. February is my most flat-lined, unsexy month. If it were up to me, married and all, I would simply forgo this silly holiday; but Husband is a romantic about holidays and we must celebrate each and every one of them.

In the past we just grabbed a hotel room somewhere and hung out, and that was cool, but this time around I have been champing at the bit for Adventure. Seemed like the time to get out of town, so we did. For the first time since the kids were born, we hit the road with nothing but a map and a change of clothes, following our noses.

Oh, such noses. We went to Seattle, saw the mummy at Ye Olde Curiosity Shop, took a ferry to Bainbridge Island; followed 101 north up along the dense forests of the Olympic Peninsula; pulled over and had ourselves a little stroll on an unnamed forest road; wandered into Sequim and shacked up in the diviest motel in all the land. In the morning we had a diner breakfast and then went to the Dungeness Spit, a super-cool wildlife refuge that cuts like a moon sliver into the Strait of Juan de Fuca. It's a strip of beach about fifty yards wide at best, home to an impressive assortment of wildlife. It being the Sunday of a three-day weekend, though, it was too over-run with Homo Sapiens to show much in the way of the wild, but we did hear a funky bird that sounded like a cork popping over and over in the misty green woods. That was neat. We walked down to the beach, took touristy pictures. Then back over the Hood Canal on another ferry, stopped for this fantastic Korean food in Bellevue, and home.

There is no greater Valentine's Day gift than this one. It made me feel alive.