4th of July Rocks Hope Island

Our daughter's fiance (husband now) is a member of Swinomish tribe. So we got to spend the 4th on the reservation where it's "no holds barred" for fire works. It'd been years since Paul or I had bought fire works in the tinderbox known as California. The kids on the other hand have never been involved in a 4th of July with all the safe and sane goodies. It was a blast!!!

This isn't Hope Island but it's pretty.




The daughter's and the sons in law to be.












Fire Safety Officer




Were you touching the fireworks?

Just a tiny bit of the spent arsenal. And it's not even dark yet.

What you can't see is the M-80 tucked in side the hot dog.

The sun finally sets at about 9:00 pm.





Because we like to mix our alcohol with our flammables.


Oohhh!



Aahhh!

Washington!

Our goal is in site-literally.



Our first ferry ride. We picked the wrong day to go on the Mukulteo-Clinton Ferry. Thursday July 3rd-the start of a big holiday weekend means a 3 hour wait for the ferry. So close and yet so far. It turned out to be a little under a two hour wait. There was even a spotless Porta-Potty to use. So, Kendra and I did...and then the cars started moving. I was telling her to hurry as our car passed us. And kept going. We ran after it. As we rounded the corner, our car was nowhere in sight. The nice Washington policeman directed us toward the car after he told us that they had already been routed back through the city. Ha Ha. Not funny after hours in the car. We caught up to where they were waiting and had just a short time to go before boarding the Ferry Kittitas.

Two ferries were going back and forth as fast as they could load and unload people and cars.



Our welcoming committee at the house.

The private path to the beach. Someone is building a new home with an amazing view.

"Our beach"

Let the building begin.

I love Whidbey Island.

We found out quickly, if you're carrying a bucket back from the beach, it probably contains your dinner. Crab, mussels, oysters and clams. Take your pick. Penn Cove mussels are the best. I saw them at out Costco yesterday.

Now if we only had a talking sponge who lives in a pineapple under the sea, we'd have a hit TV show.

Oregon here we come.

We went from Sacramento to Eugene, Oregon on our second day. Until we reached the Oregon border we were under smoky skies from all of the brush fires in central and northern California. It reminded me a lot of the days here when San Diego was on fire. There were tons of strike teams from all over. We saw engines from as far away as Corona.

Smokey skies and 95 degrees near Redding.

Fields of sunflowers.

Mount Shasta.

One of the prettiest rest stops we went to. That's the Klamath River just over the Oregon border. Most of the stops in Oregon and Washington serve free coffee, tea, lemonade and cookies.What's with California rest stops? You're lucky to get a vending machine.

Lots of logging trucks in Oregon.

We stayed in a brand new Residence Inn in Eugene. We got a two bedroom suite. Aaaahhh, that was so nice! In the morning we headed farther North toward Portland and Washington.

Portland is really cool looking. They have every type of rapid transit you can think of. We could see trains (light rail and commuter) and buses and street cars. I'm sure there were ferries down below us on the Columbia River. By far the coolest thing was the Portland Aerial Tram. I was so stunned at seeing it going over the freeway that I didn't get a picture.

And trees, trees, trees! It's so green.

We're Baaack.

I never had a permanent Internet connection. Thanks to LattaNet who ever you are. I was able to intermittently steal borrow their wireless connection. I didn't have a strong enough single to upload photos or to send e-mail from my regular server though. Soooo, I'm going to try and recreate our trip over the next few days.

Off to Oregon

More to come if we have Internet access.

Road Trip 2008

We are driving to Washington State for our second oldest daughter's wedding. We left this morning. The plan was to be out the door by 5am. We left at 4:40!! The trip is starting off great.

Doesn't every one look great at 5 am!

Our plan is to make our first big stop in Sacramento and spend the night.

We made a stop near Magic Mountain to have a road food breakfast at McDonald's. We were back on the road by 7:30; still about 30 minutes ahead of schedule.

The next five hours went by surprisingly well. The kids watched movies and read. I had put together some activity pages for each state from a home schooling site that were a big hit. They each had maps to mark there progress and we listened to the first CD of a Harry Potter book. We stopped in Stockton for lunch and Paul and I were amazed at how good everything was going.

Cool truck.

Corn.

And then it happened-Murphy's Law. Kieran didn't want to eat his lunch. He said he was sooo tired and his stomach hurt. I finished quickly and took him to the car to nap while every one finished their lunches. he had "the look". I've come to know the throw up look. He gets really pale. And as much as he told me he wasn't going to throw up, I knew he would. It started as we pulled into our state capitol. We found a nice Best Western and Paul took Kendra to the pool while Kieran dozed and barfed and Kyle zoned in front of the TV. Then I took the two non-purgers to see the capitol building. It was too late to go in but fun to walk around the grounds. There are a lot of really cool buildings right around the capitol. He only stopped throwing up about an hour ago and finally ate. Now at 8:15 he's bouncing off the walls and ready to party.