Back to Washington – Day 11

My last day in Washington. We had decided to have lunch at the Rockfish Grill, since my shuttle wasn't leaving until 2:45pm. So we had a nice lunch, then headed back to the boat. I actually only had about 30 mins at that point to finish my packing, so I did that really quick. Then I headed up to meet the shuttle. It was the same lady driver I had back in June. Nice lady. I was the only one on the shuttle with her all the way to where you change buses, so we chatted the whole time. She was telling me about how she lives in a very rural area, and that her family likes to shoot off crazy fireworks for New Years and stuff. And that they will shoot prairie dogs and stuff for digging up their property. I am for sure not pro-killing animals, but the way she told the story, it was pretty funny. I got on the other bus at the transfer station, and we continued on to Sea-Tac in the dark and rain. We got there around 6pm (a little late) and I had 2 1/2 hours to kill before my flight (it was delayed 30 mins). So I wandered the shops, bought a book ,magazine and 2 bottles of wine. Not sure why about the wine, I just thought I'd buy some on a whim. Then because of my stomach issues previously, I was too worried about eating anything too creamy, fatty or fried, so I skipped my normal trip to Ivar's at the airport for my usual fried shrimp and clam chowder. So I stopped at the place next door and got some couscous salad to go to eat on the plane. It was delicious. The flight was uneventful and I arrived in around 10:30pm to the puring rain. I thought I left that stuff in WA ;-)

Back to Washington – Day 10

So today was a much better day to take the ferry to Friday Harbor. We headed over to the terminal in the morning and waited to board the boat. Once we got on, Fred stayed in the car with Merlin and my Mom and I wandered, since I've never been on a car ferry before. Once we got over there, we made a few stops then headed to the Pelindaba Lavender Farm which was cool, but being the time of the year it is, nothing was really pretty lavender colors. Only a couple of plants.

Then we headed over to the Krystal Acres Alpaca Farm which was really cool. You could walk along the fence line and look at all of the alpacas. Then they have a really great shop on site where we chatted with the daughter in law of the owners of the farm, for a while. They had this really cool alpaca felted hat I wanted. But for $99, I couldn't justify it.

After that we stopped at the Lime Kiln Pt State Park. I decided to take a little trail down to the water to get a view of the lighthouse. Very cute.

Then off to Roche Harbor to have lunch at our little spot of the dock, The Lime Kiln Cafe. And as we were walking around, I even say an otter sitting on shore for a few, before it swam away.

We had to get back to Friday Harbor to catch the ferry to come home. This time we just stayed in the car. And for fun we turned the GPS on to watch us "driving" in the water.

We then just chilled the rest of the night, had dinner, and watched some TV.

Back to Washington – Day 9

I woke up around 8am to some of the more insane sounds of wind and rain, and the boat bouncing back and forth. After only having about 5 hours of sleep, and then the weather on top of it, I decided it may not be the best day to take the ferry over to Friday Harbor. So we postponed. My Mom and Fred took off to go grab breakfast in town, since they were already up. I got up to take a quick video of the waves outside, as they were crazy for inside a marina. Then I went back to bed, and didn’t wake up until 3pm. I didn’t plan to sleep that long. I got up and we just kind of lounged around. Eventually we had dinner (curry chicken, pasta and peas) and watched the news. We took Merlin for a walk, and I brought my new little tripod so I could take pics of the boat at night. I got one decent one at least. Then we watched ‘Letters to Juliet’ which was really cute. I decided to update my blog, then I’m going to crash. We’re going to try to take the ferry tomorrow.

Back to Washington - Day 8

I slept in until about 11am, then got ready to go into town to get lunch. We went to the Calico Cupboard, and I had a great club sandwich. It was a pretty mellow day. Gloomy as it has been, but just popped into a handful of stores downtown. Once back at the boat we did more nothing and just chilled. We had leftovers for dinner, and watched the Discovery Channel show on Jordan (that I have on DVD). Then my Mom and I watched NCIS and NCIS: Los Angeles, neither of which I normally watch, but are good. Then I went to bed and watched some old Big Brother episodes. But once I started to go to sleep, I started feeling sick again and couldn’t fall asleep until after 3am. So one of those leftovers was something that didn’t agree with me now, and the first time I had it. Wish I knew which thing it was.

Back to Washington - Day 7

I slept in today, but then we headed to La Conner to have lunch and wander the shops. It was only about a 20 min drive to get there, and we stopped at the La Conner Pub. It was right on the channel, and I had popcorn shrimp and a salad. It was really good. The town is full of cute little galleries and shops. My favorite was this wood art shop, The Wood Merchant. They have some great stuff. Everything from pill cases, to sculptures, to utensils, to artwork. And they had these cool 3-4’ playing card art pieces all made out of pieces of wood. Really neat. It got dark really quick, so we headed back. After we were back at the boat for a while, the wind started whipping (23+ mile per hours gusts), the rain started pouring, the waves got crazy, the boat started rocking, and the wind was howling loudly. That lasted a couple of hours, and I was on the verge of seasickness. It was crazy. My Dad called earlier to check in, and all is well at home. Then my Mom and I made Ivar’s clam chowder and salad for dinner while watching ‘First Knight’. Now I’m writing this while watching the TV show, ‘What I Like About You’ and am going to crash soon. Not sure what's on the agenda for tomorrow.

Back to Washington – Day 6

My Mom woke me up to say they were going to go have breakfast at the café on the dock, so I could join them, or sleep in. I got up. When we left the boat we could hear the church playing "church music" loudly outside. Then I realized it was 'Yesterday' by the Beatles, then 'We've only just begun' by The Carpenters. That was kinda cool. So we went and had breakfast (eggs over easy, bacon, english muffin and coffee for me) in the dreary weather. We headed back to the boat and took off to go back to Anacortes. We saw an eagle on a little rock island, and a tug pulling a log boom on the way. Other than that, it was pretty uneventful. We had some downtime when we got back and saw ‘King Arthur’ was on, so we watched that. Then we had sausages, rice and green beans for dinner, using the dining room for the first time. Then just chilled out and watched some tv and I crashed early. Unfortunately though, I started feeling sick and started tossing and turning for 2 hours. Felt like a minor gall bladder attack, which sucks. But I eventually crashed.

Back to Washington - Day 5

So today they woke me up because we were heading to Roche Harbor (I was here back in June too, as well as Friday Harbor). And I like the parts of the trip where we are cruising and watching the scenery go by, so I got up. We just hung out in the pilot house/galley and watched the world go by. When we arrived, we made breakfast for lunch. Scrambled eggs with cheese, onions, and other good stuff I can’t remember, and bacon. Then we headed up to shore. We were up there maybe 20 minutes before it started raining. So we wandered a bit more, and went to the Harbormaster’s office to pay up for the night on the dock, then back to the boat. My Mom, Merlin and I were quite drenched when we returned. But a little rain isn't going to hurt us. We knew the Cal game was on today and my Step-Dad wanted to watch, and my Mom too. So we put that on as I got their Directv remote programmed and working. My Mom made this yummy hamburger, bean, onion, etc casserole that she does for dinner, and I picked up some cheesy bread at the store this afternoon to go with it. So had that as we finished watching Cal lose. Eh… I didn’t care. We checked to see what was on TV tonight and saw Hawaii Five-O. I never watched the original, nor had I caught any of the new series. But we watched it and I enjoyed it. If I start watching it, does that mean it’ll be canceled? ;-) I kinda had the Yahoo feed of the Sharks game on at the same time. Wasn’t paying too close of attention, but YAY, they won. We hung out a little bit longer, and I updated my Amazon with list, and checked out the wish list’s of family members. They crashed and I sat here and wrote by blog. I’m exhausted, but figured I’d get it out of the way while I still remembered the details of today. Tomorrow we head back to Anacortes, because they have a Monday am appt to get something on their car checked out. So hopefully Monday afternoon or Tuesday we can head out again to do something, as I fly out on Friday.

Back to Washington - Day 4

I got out of bed around 8:45am this morning, surprisingly. And it was sunny out… with some clouds though. We had thought we were going to take a drive to La Connor to bum around. But we soon decided, after checking the upcoming weather forecast, that today may be the best weather we see while I’m here. So we decided to go for it and take the boat out, for the first time since they bought it. We went first to get 400 gallons of fuel put in it, then headed to Friday Harbor. Much faster than Aquila would have taken us. So we got there in an hour and a half, and had some lunch on the way. When we got there, we just wandered around town a bit. We also saw Popeye, the seal who is blind in one eye and comes to the docks every day for handouts. And I found a great candy store. One that carries all sorts of random candies from the 60’s, 70’s, etc that you can’t get everywhere, so I bought a few things. Then we just headed back to the boat as it got dark. Fred got the idea in his head to transfer his Directv account from their old house, to the receiver on the boat. So after about 90+ mins on the phone with them, we now have satellite TV on the boat. So we watched some TV while having pork loin, mashed potatoes and fresh asparagus for dinner. Then I continued to watch some TV after they crashed, while writing this blog.

Back to Washington - Day 3

So last night I was laying in bed watching a TV show on my iPod, and it was freezing! I know it was 37 degrees outside, and it felt like that inside here too. I definitely turned off the heater in the boat too soon. It was pretty much just my hands and face not under the covers, and boy did I have to warm them up. Plus I ended up sleeping with a sheet, comforter and 2 blankets. Once I warmed up I was good though. Brrrr before that though. And something else I remembered while I was laying there, was that we had checked the info on the car when we came into town yesterday, and we had driven about 930 miles, and about 15 ½ hours of driving over the course of the 2 days. Wow!

Anyway… I definitely needed to catch up on my sleep last night after waking up every 2 hours at the hotel the night before. So I ended up sleeping until 11am, which definitely wasn’t planned. Today was an errand day, so nothing major happened. We got ready to head out, and went to West Marine to get their new stove top for the boat. We had some really great Chinese food for lunch, then went grocery shopping. When we got back we checked in the Harbormaster office for some packages we were expecting. One being my new Otterbox case for my phone, which did arrive and I’m happy with. Unfortunately though, we had to cart all these things back to the boat in the rain. We just unpacked everything, then relaxed for a bit and read magazines and such. Then we had pulled pork, mashed potatoes and peas for dinner as we watched Princess Ka’iulani. I really enjoyed it, great historical story that I didn’t know.

I have also been pondering a job that was suggested to me by a friend the other day, and decided to apply for it. Unfortunately being out of the state though, I had to search my e-mail for my resume and try to come up with a cover letter (which I am actually taking a break from to write this). So I’m going to chat with my friend tomorrow, who happens to work at this place, about some specifics. We’ll see what happens. Tomorrow’s plans are up in the air depending on weather. We may go drive to a little town and have lunch and check out the cute shops, or we may actually take the boat out for the first time ever (since my parent’s have gotten it). If we don’t take it out tomorrow, than maybe another day or two when the weather eases up.

Back to Washington - Day 2

Got up at 7am again for another long day. Went and had the free breakfast at the hotel, including biscuits and gravy, eggs, sausage, bacon, cereal, yogurt, waffles, coffee juice, etc (no, I didn’t eat all that) and got on our way around 8:30am. And it was another gloomy day as we headed out through more of Oregon. We stopped at one rest stop (mind you we also had my mom’s dog with us) and continued on. We planned to stop at the Mount St Helens Visitor Center on the way. We knew due to the weather that we wouldn’t see the mountain, but wanted to stop anyway. It was a nice center with a short but good video about the eruption. I was five when it happened, so only vaguely remember it being on the news, but watching the video was freaky. Remind me never to move close to an active volcano. The grounds around the center were pretty and the sky was amazing, so walked around and took a few pics. When we had gotten off that exit, we noticed a sign that said Burgers and Espresso that caught my eye, because how random is a burger and espresso joint? So we stopped there for lunch before getting back on the freeway/highway. Total hole in the wall place with a really nice early 20 something girl working there. The burgers were great, and we even got some ice cream for the ride. Surprisingly as we approached Seattle, the weather started clearing up and there were pretty blue skies. I checked the GPS on my phone and noticed 2 strips of high traffic areas, due to major accidents, coming up past Seattle. UGH… no fun. Probably added an hour to our trip, and it turned dark at this point. We just wanted to get to Anacortes. Think we arrived around 6:30ish. Then their boat (sorry… motor yacht) is docked about 1/5 of a mile down a couple of docks, so had to load up all of our stuff in carts and lug it down there. This is my first time seeing their new boat, since they just bought it last month I think it was. It’s beautiful and has so much more space than their last boat, more staterooms, more heads, more closets, more stairs, etc. They showed me around, and instead of being stateroom door to stateroom door with them, like on their last boat… I go from their stateroom, up the stairs to the salon, up the stairs to the galley, down the stairs to a hallway, then are 2 more staterooms and a head. My Mom jokes that I have my own wing, and that’s what it feels like. I’m on the opposite end of the boat. It was too dark to check out the upper helm or the bow, so that will wait til tomorrow. And we were too exhausted to fully unpack and straighten up, so pics of the boat will have to wait until tomorrow. So after we chatted a bit, I uploaded a few pics and wrote this and yesterday’s blog entries. Now being 11pm, I think I’m about to pass out. Night!

Back to Washington - Day 1

My Mom and Fred were picking me up at 8am, so I reluctantly got up at 7am after a few hours of sleep. It was an uneventful start of the drive, and made our first stop after a few hours, at a rest stop. The same one my Aunt and I stopped at a month ago on our way to Redding. We then continued for a few more hours as it started getting rainier and rainier. Our goal was to stop at a Big Bear Diner in Redding for lunch, just to find the place surrounded by cops and a fire truck. We tried to go in anyway, only to find a water line broke at the restaurant and they stopped serving people. We knew there was another one an hour up the road in Mount Shasta City, so we decided to stop there instead of finding another place to eat. As we got close, the rain started coming down and my Step Dad was noticing the temp outside was going from 35 to 34 to 33… and then we noticed that the rain seemed to be floating through the air. It was actually snowing. When we parked at the restaurant it was still snowing, but nothing heavy as it wasn’t sticking. I thought it was cool, because I love snow and rarely get to se it, while they were more worried about the pass in Oregon. After lunch we headed on into Oregon and made it to the pass. At this point there is snow on the ground on both sides of the freeway, and it was coming down pretty good. So much that the visibility sucked, and we even saw an over turned truck on the side of the road with emergency vehicles. Yikes! Once over the pass, the snow turned back to rain and we made it to Roseburg, OR. We checked into the hotel around 5:30pm, then my Mom and I wandered next to the hotel to a Petco and stuff. And they were actually selling ferrets. Unusual to see them in a pet store. We then decided to order a pizza to be delivered, as we were exhausted from the long drive, then just crashed.