Day 5

The next morning, our friends recommended a hike and a drive. By day's end, Jeff and I both agreed that we had just experienced the most visually beautiful day of our entire lives. The pictures don't do the places justice, but believe me, I was walking around with my mouth hanging open.

The hike was a nature walk along a river through the most lush terrain I've ever trod upon.



Huckleberries, anyone?


When we'd had our fill of that kind of beauty, we moved on to beauty of a different sort. We drove on a mountainous road for about an hour when it suddenly opened up to this:


At the very end of the road is a big parking lot with the best vistas ever:


The following pics are not photo-shopped. We really did go sledding in August. :)


That night, we went to one of the nearby lakes.




Jeff and Tobias played Chicken on the paddle board.

Day 6

You'll notice there are four little booklets in the above picture. Yes, Delaney's passport finally arrived TWO DAYS before we left.

You may be wondering, "Aimee, why would you spend so much money to get your kids passports if you were just going to the state of Washington?"

Well, geography students, if you examine your U.S. map closely, you'll see that just north of Washington is a place called Canada.



We took a day trip up into the city of Vancouver and went to the...


...where they had multiple species of Jeff's favorite animal...the jellyfish:


Next we went to Granville Island and ate pierogies which I've decided are the perfect comfort food. Yes, I could grow quite fat on those tender little dumplings.

We went to a rock store where I purchased this prehnite pendant.


The lady I bought it from looked very unusual and when she opened her mouth, things only got weirder.

Her: "This is a very important crystal. It's wonderful when people are attracted to it. It will really help strengthen your shakra and when you put it on you'll see that it will begin to glow."

Me: "Ummm...it's really...pretty."

Whatever...

Then we went for a walk in a park.

Is it just me or does it look like this guy is behind his dog with a frying pan and spatula, ready to cook up anything the canine drops?


Ewwww...

Then it was back to the U.S. of A. for some sailing on a catamaran.




Our Washingtonian friends:

Day 7

This was kind of a sad day (for spoiled babies such as ourselves) because we all knew it was the last real day of vacation.

We drove to Seattle and met up with my cousin, Devon, at the Washington Park Arboretum.

Here she is with her cute little kidlets:


The arboretum was fantastic! I'd love to spend hours there walking all the different woodsy trails. As it was, the one trail we did take went past a lovely pond, full of lily pads.


Soon it was lunch time and we drove to Lucy's house. She's an old friend who served as our tour guide for the day. Here she is with the Blue Angels flying in the background:


The first place she navigated us to was Paseo, a Cuban sandwich shop in the Fremont area. It doesn't look like much, practically just a corrugated steel shack, but we soon found out why there was a huge line of people queuing up out front.


We told Lucy we'd buy her meal, so imagine our horror when we finally got to the front of the massive line and discovered that it is a cash-only eatery. There are few things more embarrassing than offering to buy someone lunch and then having to borrow money from them to pay for it. However, we soon found an ATM and made things right.

Jeff got the Midnight Cuban Press sandwich. After a couple of bites, he declared it the best sandwich he'd ever eaten. My Cuban Roast was amazing as well, but I must warn you, these are five-napkin-sandwiches. In fact, I couldn't take any photos of them while eating for fear of ruining my camera with the marinated gloriousness that was dripping off my hands.

After the mop up, we took a stroll down Troll Ave.


It's under the Aurora Bridge and if you walk its length to the north end, you'll meet this guy:


Tobias risks life and limb to investigate:

(See the car he's gripping in his left hand? It's a real VW Bug.)

Delaney shares a secret with her new friend:


Our family doesn't like to visit any major metropolitan area without sniffing out the local chocolatier, so Lucy directed us here:


Wow...this place is amazing! Unfortunately, all the tours for the day were full (I would have LOVED to watch one of my favorite substances go through its formation process, although I may have fallen into the chocolate river and gotten sucked up some pipe like Augustus Gloop), however, the show room made up for any disappointment. It was dazzling.

Little tables with HUGE PILES OF SAMPLES of every flavor were scattered around the room.

Imagine me circling this thing like a shark...


...and then going in for the kill...

...over and over again.

Yes, I must confess that I had more than one sample of many of these delectables, but we did buy a bag full of the goods before we left and, believe me, each bar cost more than a Hershey bar.

The Chai Tea was my favorite.

Next we went down to the Seattle Center to stare up at the Space Needle.


It costs about $17 per person to ride the elevator up to the top, so we forewent that pleasure, consoling ourselves with the fact that we had a bag o' chocolate.

It was getting late and we needed to get to Portland for the night, so we said goodbye to Lucy and hopped on the freeway. Look at the beauty that surrounds one even on a Washingtonian freeway:


The creepiest part of our entire trip was when we saw this guy:

He kept staring and staring at us. (Click on the photo to enlarge it for the fully unnerving effect.)

It was so freaky, my heart was racing until Tobias declared, "It's a mask!"

I breathed a sigh of relief and began to giggle as I grabbed my camera. By the way, his hat says, "I heart Bingo." :) What a delightfully entertaining weirdo.

I won't bother to detail Day 8 since it just involved us awakening at 4:00 AM to catch our plane home and that's about it.

All in all, this was my all-time favorite vacation. The beauty was nearly overwhelming and the time with all of our friends was fabulous.

So when I got home and again saw our shower that has needed to be replaced for two years (Jeff is seen here doing some of the demolition work)...


...I had to concede that I'm glad we spent the money we had on the trip instead of fixing the shower. Our kids will only be with us to make beautiful memories for a few more years and we do have another shower so it's not like we're all stinking in the meantime.

*Sigh*

I heart Washington.