Day 6: Mount Rainier Gondola

By Friday, we were beat.  We used it as a "recovery day" before our flight home. We slept in, and enjoyed breakfast at the hotel.  I'm not much for big breakfasts...but there were eggs, sausage, bacon, waffles...and a whole lot of other things to choose from.  Eating a big breakfast meant we needed snacks or less for lunch, so it was one way we could save a little money on this trip.    We decided to keep it simple, so we picked one fun thing to do just a couple hours away from our "home base" in Puyallup.
We visited the Mount Rainier Gondola at the Crystal Mountain Resort.
What a beautiful place!

I learned on this trip that pictures do a poor job of giving any perspective to the size of hills and mountains.  This was a steep ride.  We rode up the gondola with a lady who works at the resort.  She rides the gondola almost daily, but still won't ride on the side looking down.  :-)

We loved it!  It was such a smooth, quiet ride that the height didn't bother us a bit.  

You ride all the way up this steep bluff, and then just as you crest the top a majestic view of Mount Rainier appears.

A kind older gentleman offered to take our picture.  He was a little flustered by my big fancy camera.  He snapped a picture of us (and everybody else on the mountain).  But sure enough, we were in focus, so with a little cropping the picture was just fine:

Boo looks a little tentative about the cliff behind us.  It was steep!  But Mike, on the other hand, scoffed at it saying he had climbed worse on Monday.  ;-)

There were some hiking trails on the summit, but after a week on my feet, my ankles were blown up like balloons (this was a first for me).  So, I grabbed a lounge chair and enjoyed the view while they explored a bit.

The local critters kept me entertained as they ran under my chair and even out from under my skirt!

This guy came close enough to touch:

I wished I had a little something to offer them.  :-)

This was Mount Adams off in the distance:

And if you look really close, the dark shadow in the center of this picture is Mount St. Helens:

Just a gorgeous spot...we would highly recommend it!  If you like critters, bring a crust of bread and they'd probably take it from your hand.

It was yet another hot day, so this was a perfect choice as there was a cool breeze at the summit. Down we go... 

That parking lot was huge!  It looks so tiny in the picture... And this concludes the site seeing portion of our trip.   I can't believe how much we saw and did last week!  It really was an amazing vacation.  We were so thankful that the weather was favorable for site seeing (hot, but no rain!), and in spite of being tired and run-down, we were healthy. There's just so much to see and do in Washington...a week wasn't enough!  But, it feels so very good to be back home...where we can get anywhere we want to go in 15 minutes or less.  ;-)

Day 5: Seattle

Thursday was our Seattle day.  
We knew there was no way we could do justice to Seattle in one day...
We also knew that, given the choice, seeing the mountains and the countryside was better to us than seeing the city.
We met up with a sweet friend who happens to live near Seattle, and she helped us make the most of our one day there.  
This is a lady that we knew back in college.  I never had the opportunity to know her well, but we've been able to keep in touch a little over the long distance because of the blog world.  We decided that our girls had much in common, and that if we were ever close by, we needed to get them together.   This was our chance...

...and it was a good idea because these two ladies were fast friends.

The first landmark we got to see what the famous (or infamous?) gum wall:

Eeeeeew!!

Pike Place Market was next:

The girls enjoying fresh peaches on "the pig":

And oh my...those peaches...

...they were sweet, ripe, FRESH, juice-runnin'-down-your-chin kinda peaches...  Mmm.

We planned to just skip lunch that day and sample a few things from the market.  Everything we sampled was excellent.  

The fresh produce in Washington makes me turn my nose up at the Minnesota stuff now.  (I know...I really gotta get myself better acquainted with the farmer's market.)

And the flowers....

So gorgeous!  And so cheap!

Mike also came across some Turkish delight:

We've always been curious what made this treat sooo good that Edmund would sell his soul for it (Narnia).  I guess I forgot to ask Mike how he liked it, but it looked exactly like the stuff in the movie.  :-)

Here was an interesting feature:

It was a tribute to the Japanese Internment Camps during World War II.

We made our way up the loooong hill to the Monorail, and took a ride over to the Seattle Center where, again, I'm sure we could have spent an entire day.  

We had to go up the Space Needle:

We spent some time up top--had a snack and enjoyed the view.  Then, we headed down and began our journey back to the car.  We could have done more, but we wanted to beat the worst of Seattle's rush hour, and we wanted to give our girls some time to play that evening.  

Scott and Mindy graciously hosted us for dinner on their deck where we enjoyed sweet fellowship for hours.  Such a blessing to spend time with people who love the Lord and strive walk with Him...who delight in sharing what He is doing in their hearts and lives...and who teach us and challenge us to press on in our walk as well.  We miss that kind of "discipleship-fellowship"...that "iron-sharpens-iron" kind of fellowship that we so greatly appreciated during our time in Fargo.  Our life and ministries are a direct result of the legacy that was passed down to us by those who so faithfully invested in us all those years ago.  We are so thankful for their godly example.

One precious moment from the evening was when Mindy brought out her old prayer cards, and found Mike's name written there in the list of "single men".  She prayed for him back then--that he would find a wife.  It's very humbling to think that I'm the answer to those prayers.  God is gracious.

That evening was special, and it would have been nice to have a couple of pictures to remember it by.  But by that point in the day, I felt like we looked awful...and smelled awful (sorry Scott!)...  So, the memories will have to live on in our hearts instead of in pictures.  But I think it's safe to say that the "play date" for our girls turned into a blessing for all of us, and that evening was a "divine appointment" for which we are very grateful.

Day 4: Astoria, Oregon (Part 2)

After Fort Clatsop, we decided to check out the Astoria Column.

Planes are available for a dollar...

...and those who make it to the top can throw their little wood plane over the rail.  Cheap fun!

Unfortunately, there were some local kids (based on their license plate) who made it their mission to steal as many wood planes as possible and hide them in their truck before people could get back down from the tower to claim them.  And after we met their dad, we decided it was definitely not worth messing with him over a $1 plane.  Ha!  Disappointing, but at least we were able to reclaim one of our wood planes to keep for a souvenir.  

Next, we went over to briefly check out the Columbia River Maritime Museum.  Very interesting place...and yet another attraction that we normally would have spent an entire day investigating if we could have.

Knowing that we had a long drive ahead, we had to cut short our Astoria visit and make our way toward Puyallup (pronounced "Pew AL up" with a short a sound...finally mastered this by our last day there!)  We had one more thing to see on the way...
The Pacific Ocean:

It was a very hot day and we were short on time, so we found an ocean access near Cape Disappointment, and we ended up having the whole beach to ourselves which was really special.  This was Elizabeth's first time seeing the ocean, and it was my first time seeing the Pacific. 

She was very excited...

It was a windy day and the waves were wild:

There were all sorts of water birds along the beach:

The pelicans waddling around just made me giggle...

Very pretty spot...

...and a girl happy to see the ocean for the very first time:

Day 4: Astoria, Oregon (Part 1)

Wednesday was a crazy busy day spent in the Astoria, Oregon area. We had far more on our "to do" list than we could possibly accomplish in one day.
We stayed in a riverfront hotel and woke up to this amazing dense fog over the water:

Lots of ships were passing through.  This is the Spar Corvus from Norway.  We were able to track it online which was sort of cool.  

 

The riverfront was gorgeous, and Mike took lots of great pictures.  But there's just no way a blog can do justice to a week in the PNW... so you're just gonna have to stop over sometime if you want to see more.
The fog quickly gave way to sunshine, and this became one of the nicest-weather days of our trip. 
When we travel, one of our favorite things is to experience the history of the region we're visiting.  Astoria is full of Lewis and Clark history, so we had to stop over to the Lewis and Clark National Historic Park to explore Fort Clatsop.

This is the place where the folks from the Lewis and Clark Expedition spent the winter of 1805/06. 

There were beautiful walking trails through the woods:

We met one of the locals along the path...

...he was interesting.

The original fort rotted away, but huts have been reconstructed here and are open to visitors daily:

I think we could have easily spent a whole day here.  They had people dressed in character giving various lessons and demonstrations, and we were only able to catch a couple.  

We stayed for a lesson on the local berries:

Here, Elizabeth is crushing berries for berry leather:

We stopped to say hello to Sacagawea and Jean Baptiste.  I have a great admiration for this woman as she endured all of the discomforts and deprivation of the expedition with a baby. 

I told Elizabeth she should pinch Jean Baptiste's cheek:  

She reluctantly agreed but she felt a little foolish.  ;-) 

I can see that a Part 2 is in order...  We're not even half done with our day!