Seattle Family Trip

I gotta throw a post together because I haven't written anything this whole month of July.  I haven't skipped a month since I started this little blog of mine, so I can't miss one now!

So I will tell you a bit about our recent family vacation to Washington.  We decided to go to Seattle this year because our plans to go to San Diego fell flat when Chelsea got her mission call to Southern California.  Even though she has been there before (hello!  we lived there for 3 years), we didn't want to ruin the "newness" of it for her by vacationing near where she will be serving.  So we thought of other fun places that we could visit that are in a day's driving distance.  I've wanted to go back to the Seattle area for a long time, and since the kids had never been there and our friends, the Hammers, just moved there, Seattle became our destination.

I love planning our trips.  This one fell together nicely.

Day 1 Drive to Snoqualmie, dinner with Hammers, visit Snoqualmie Falls, see their new house.

Day 2 Hard but fun morning run through the woods with Hammers, awesome afternoon hike up to Rattlesnake Ledge, swimming underwater with my eyes open at the hotel pool (feeling like a kid again),  ate some serious pizza at Serious Pie downtown Seattle, added gum to the "Gum Wall", 10:30 pm up the Space Needle

Day 3 Drive to Mukilteo for a really interesting Boeing tour (no pics could be taken in the hangers where they build the airplanes), seafood lunch at Ivars, 1 1/2 hour wait to get on ferry to my old stomping ground Whidbey Island, found my old house and school in Oak Harbor, skipped rocks at Deception Pass, dinner and sleep in Anacortes

There's my beach (photo taken from below the bridge)

My beautiful girls

My kids skipping and collecting rocks in the same place I did 30 years ago

My fam at Deception Pass

Remembering the days of being eight years old and running around this very spot

Eclectic (and spendy) food at Adrift

Day 4 Walk onto ferry to San Juan Island- Friday Harbor, BBQ lunch, 3 hour super cool whale watching adventure with Western Prince on their "Western Exporer" coast guard-like boat, ferry 1 1/2 hours back to Anacortes' Ships Harbor Inn all worn out

Getting off the ferry at Friday Harbor

We looked pretty funny in these suits, but we stayed warm out on the water

Here's the company owner, Captain Ivan

There's our awesome naturalist, JB, standing up behind me

Thanks to Ivan, the Captain, we have some good pics of the wildlife we watched. He had the right lens to capture the action up close.  He emailed us the following six pictures of our excursion that day.  Watching the eagles fighting in the air (over who had dibs on the seal carcass on the rocks) was so cool.  I'm glad Ivan got those memorable pics.  We found the whales up in Canadian waters.  We followed them for an hour.

Emma taking in view of the ferry from Ships Harbor Inn

 Day 5 Enjoyed scenery while driving south to Seattle, had a blast seeing "Seattle By Segway" 1 1/2 hour tour, walked around Pike Place Market, enjoyed watching the Mariners play the Indians and ate yummy ballpark food

That's one happy guy!

Matt loved keeping score in his new score book

Day 6 We had a great brunch at Issaquah Cafe and then said good-bye to the greenery and drove home to brown Meridian.  It's nice to be home, though.  Home is where ever we are together.  I could live anywhere, really.  There's good and bad to every place.  I'm grateful for all of the moving around the country that I have experienced.  I'm glad I have been able to go back to most of those towns.  Maybe next summer we can go back to Colorado Springs.  Garden of the Gods sounds fun.  Hmmmm.  I think the planning has begun!