The Great Northwest - August 17 - September 17, 2006

We’re Ba-ack! I’d like to say we’ve been sooo busy that I haven’t had time to work on the blog, but honestly - it’s not true. You’re talking about two people who can sleep ten hours at a stretch, so who are we kidding!!

We had a great time exploring the Puget Sound area. Our first stop was the quaint little town of Gig Harbor – across the Narrows Bridge from Tacoma and one of our favorite spots. We made a visit to the Tides Tavern, one of my old haunts from years past, where we enjoyed the view of the harbor and some great food. I’ve been hunting down the perfect crab louis and Ez is looking for the world’s best clam chowder, so we both did some research. Ez also indulged me by driving around Tacoma to check out the old neighborhoods and scenes from my childhood. Some places have really changed; others, not so much. Tacoma has the reputation of being a real blue collar town – which is true; but it also has some beautiful old neighborhoods that look down over the bay. Of course, I always lived in the blue collar part of town. .

We took the ferry to nearby Vashon Island to visit Ez's former brother-in-law and his wife at their lovely home. She's quite the gardener as you can see and the yard is overflowing with flowers. We enjoyed ourselves so much, we missed the last ferry and had to spend the night. Darn!

Next we traveled south to the little town of McKenna where we spent a week camping out at my brother’s place. He and his wife have a great log home on a big wooded lot that looks like a park! They don’t have a driving range of course, but that didn’t stop us from giving them their first golf lesson by driving golf balls out into the woods!

We took a drive down to Mt. St. Helens one afternoon – the first trip for all of us. The devastation is still pretty dramatic, even though the mountain blew its top way back in 1980. The forest is beginning to recover, but there’s still that big crater where half of the mountain used to be.



One of our favorite days was when we went sailing out of Olympia with some friends on their two sailboats. It was sunny and a brisk, fresh breeze came up that made for a perfect day on the water.

We left McKenna and moved on to Hood Canal – which isn’t a canal at all, but an arm of Puget Sound. As you can see from the photo, our RV site looked right out onto the canal, so we had a front row seat for watching seals, eagles and osprey. My cousin and his wife have a home right on the water nearby, so we enjoyed spending time with them and some of their friends. They also loaded us up with fresh crab, smoked salmon, and clams, so we’re set for seafood for a while. And my brother and his wife brought their boat over for a day, so we were treated to another day on the water. We added Hood Canal to the growing list of places where we’d like to spend more time.

From Hood Canal it was an hour's drive to Bremerton where we walked on to the ferry to Seattle. From the ferry terminal in Seattle we were within striking distance of Pike Place Market, the Seattle Aquarium and all the other waterfront sights. We had lunch at the Athenian Lunch at Pike Place Market (where scenes from Sleepless in Seattle were filmed) and did further crab louis/clam chowder research.

Our odyssey was interrupted when we got bad news – a very dear friend succumbed to cancer and we flew back to Phoenix for the services. We were glad to see some family and old friends, but the circumstances were heart-breaking. We’re back on track again now, but with a new appreciation for every day we’re lucky enough to have together.