Pacific Northwest Trip Report - Part II

Helen and I spend July 2-5 in Spokane, Washington, along the Spokane River. We drove to East Wenatchee on the 5th and stayed overnight with friends. We went on to Tacoma on the July 6, where we visited Mike and Linda Sawers, our cousins. On the 7th we went on the Harstine Island, in Puget Sound, with a stop at Olympia to see Allan and Jeanne Vogel. We stayed in Harstine for several days before heading back to Colorado Springs on the 10th.

We spent the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th with my younger sister Linda and her husband, Fred Anderson, in Spokane. We arrived on the 2nd at about 10:00 AM, having driven in from Moses Lake, just in time to watch Linda run off with our niece, Lindsey Knight. Lindsey was on her way to a soccer camp, so Helen and I made ourselves at home in Linda’s condo while we waited for her return. The three of us went to a nice restaurant – C.I. Shenanigans – in downtown Spokane, in between driving Lindsey from one appointment to another. In the late afternoon, Fred came home from his job in Newport, and Lindsey and her mother, Kris, came to dinner with us. We had a good time getting reacquainted. Fred Anderson may be new as a member of the family, but I've known him since we were both about 12, the age Lindsey is now.

On the 3rd we wandered around Brown’s Addition, which is undergoing a lot of renovation and building, after some years of decline. We found a really good restaurant just up the hill from the condo, Marron. A nice touch, I thought, was that the wall on the street side was made of two automatic garage doors, so that they could open up the walls on a warm evening.

My other sister Nancy and her partner Joel Neier came over on the 4th - they were going to a wedding on the 5th. My brother Bill flew in from Eugene, Oregon on the 4th; he'd been undergoing some training for his new job down there. Some of us wandered around the riverside during the day, admiring the falls, and in the evening we gathered at Linda and Fred’s to watch the downtown fireworks show. We met two of Linda's nieces and her grandnephew, Braden. Braden is four, and he's very cute. The weather had been pretty warm in the first part of the week, but it cooled off nicely for the 4th. On the 5th, most of us met at Huckleberry’s for breakfast, and then went our separate ways. Linda and Fred took Helen and me on a guided tour of the South Hill of Spokane, an area I hadn’t been to in years. The Park Inn tavern is still there.
Because the weather had cooled off some, we drove to East Wenatchee by way of Coulee Dam, and managed to find my uncle's old house in Elmer City. We drove on Tilmus Street, in Coulee Dam, where I lived when I was four or five, but I didn't remember the house number. There is some amazing scenery in that area. You go from high desert, to flood-sculpted volcanic towers and canyons, to irrigated fields of wheat and corn. When we dropped down to the Columbia River valley around Orondo, we were in the orchards of apples, peaches, cherries, apricots, and all kinds of fruit. The orchards in the desert always remind me of the Euphrates River in Turkey, on the way up to Malatya.

We stayed over with our friends Lloyd and LaVerne Smith in East Wenatchee. The weather was moderate for a change - highs in the mid-80s, instead of the high 90s or 100s. Then we drove down to Tacoma and saw my cousin Mike and his wife, Linda. As it happened, we arrived on July 6, which was their anniversary. It had slipped my mind that we were arriving on that date, but we had a good time reminiscing about their wedding. It was about 108 in Yakima back on July 6, 1968, and it must have been 130 inside the church. It was much nicer in Tacoma in 2008. We went downtown to the harbor, Mike and Linda took us to a great seafood place for dinner, and we got to enjoy their house. They have a great view of Puget Sound, all the way up to Mt. Baker (on a clear day). We spent a few days at Nancy's place on Harstine Island, stopping for lunch with our friends Al and Jeanne Vogel on the way. We were privileged to visit the Vogel’s boat, Celt’s Cupcake, at its marina in Olympia. Harstine is quite a large island, with a number of spellings available for its name. We walked on the beach and along the wooded roads, and we made good use of the pool. One day we went to Belfair to visit the Theler bird refuge. This consists of boardwalks over both fresh- and saltwater marshes along Hood Canal, and was a very nice contrast to our birding haunts in Colorado. We went into the local metropolis – Shelton, for dinner one night, and had the misfortune to dine at the Ming Tree. This was quite possibly the worst Chinese food I’ve ever eaten. After three enjoyable days in the water world of Puget Sound, we had to leave.

Then we drove home - over 1,500 miles in three days. We took US-12 from Chehalis to Yakima, so we had views – not close views, but sightings, of Mt. St. Helens, Mt. Rainier, and Mt. Adams. We re-crossed the Colorado line south of Laramie Saturday afternoon, July 12, and made it home in time to feed our cat Hobbes his dinner. It’s good to be home.