More travel!

Ok, so we've been gone again.  This time we do have a really good reason though!

My wife's sister-in-law passed away from pancreatic cancer recently and her husband (my wife's brother) was holding a Celebration of Life to memorilize his wife.  It was held in a small town near their home on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington state.  I've never attended such a celebration but this was quite interesting.  She was a poet so various people read their favorites from her poems.  It was quite a fitting sendoff.  Of course having someone close to you die of such a terrible disease is really quite awful.  In her case it was especially nasty because originally there was hope that it was operable and in the end it was not.

The ceremony did lead me to think about what I am doing with my life and I believe I'll be making some changes to give more back to our community.  I was thinking that if it were a celebration of my life it would only be family members attending.  I need to do more.

Because of the sadness of the occasion I didn't bother trying to take photos but there were sure some opportunities!  That part of the world is both beautiful and depressing at the same time.  Locally it is called Washington's Banana Belt.  Well, you could have fooled us!  Rain, mist, cloud and just plain wet was the order of the day.  You fly into Seattle then drive about 3 hours so that pretty much takes a day.  Coming home is another day.  So on a 5 day trip you spend 3 with the people you've come to see.  Yeah, I guess you could compress it if you wanted but I'm over 70 and don't want 12 or 14 hour days. 

Now it seems as though things will settle down for a bit.  We have no travels planned so anything that comes along will be a surprise.  Right now the things on my calendar are getting lab work done and my annual visit with the doctor.  Talk about hot stuff!

So this is what Washington looks like in good weather.  This was taken July of last year on the Washington shore of the Strait of Juan de Fuca.  Thanks for stopping by!

OMG - almost a month!

Well, I'm falling off the blogging trail again.  Sorry about that.  The good news is that we've been having fun.  We took our first plane trip together since something like 2002.  It was a trip up to Seattle for a relative's birthday.  Interesting trip what with one thing and another.  The first thing was that we agreed to make it a computer-free trip.  That was a first!  I guess it was successful; neither of us missed our little electronic friend too much.  Then our flight was on a Delta affiliate - that is a term for someone with really small planes painting them to look like a Delta plane and using Delta's gangways.  We are carry-on folks and have never had a problem but this time my wife's roll-along was deemed too large and was put into the hold at the gangway!  It was a minor inconvience but still.  I have to admit though that my smaller bag pretty much filled the overhead compartment.  It was two and two seating; glad we are friends!  Walking down the aisle pretty much introduced you to everyone else in the plane.  Still, it got us there & back so that's the important thing.  There was a 5 minute delay or so to retrieve the bag from the hold on each end. 

We lived in and around Seattle back in the 1970's and 80's but haven't visited the city itself in a very long time.  God, what a mess!  Seattle is built on a narrow strip of land between the Sound and Lake Washington.  It and it's suburbs make for a long skinny metro area so I-5 going north & south gets lots of traffic.  I mean 30 mph stop and go crap in the middle of the day.  I can hardly imagine the rush hour.  We were in the two person HOV lane so generally got to do the the 30 mph; those other poor folks were doing more of the stop and go. 

We had a day before we had to go out to the party so hit the waterfront.  The seagulls are still pretty noisy!

After that excitement, what can you say?  We walked around a bit and called it a day.  The next day we went over to the peninsula for the party.  You'll have to take my word for it that our relative who lives near Gig Harbor has a nice view of Mt. Rainier.  This was Washington sunshine at it's best.

After the party we wandered up towards Sequim, WA on the Olympic Peninsula.  Squim is considered the 'banana belt' of Western Washington.  Somehow it is in the 'rain shadow' of the mountains so gets less rain and more sun than most places.  Sure enough, we did get to see the Olympics though there was some cloud around.

We stayed in a small motel outside of town.  In the season I'm sure they do a good business but mid-week in March; not so much!  They probably have 100 rooms, I think there were three other people staying while we were there.  The people running the place have a delightful sense of humor though.  They gathered some little pieces of driftwook and placed them on posts along the driveway.  I thought they were really cool.

It was good to get home I must say.  The cat took about 24 hours to decide to like us again.  Now I can't get him off my lap!  Will we go flying off and leave him again?  Certainly!  But not right away.  We still really like traveling in our trailer but heading up to snow country in March we thought might be difficult.  As it turned out, it would have been fine.  The weather was rainy but mild.  We wouldn't have seen Seattle though and that was fun. 

There is another trip planned in our future but I'll talk about that more after it happens.  It will be another flight and another computer-free trip.  Should be interesting!  Take care & thanks for stopping by.