MY TRIP TO THE NORTHWEST

Last week on Thursday I left work early and went straight to the Charles M. Schulz Sonoma County Airport, which is a few blocks from our clinic. I took the evening flight to Portland, Oregon and was met by Jim in our van. OK, to back up, Jim took off on the Monday before this for a road trip up the coast to combine seeing his brother, Lee, and wife Louise, in Vancouver, Washington, with a quick trip to Seattle to pick up boxes stored at my brother Larry's house. When Jim picked me up around 10 pm on Thursday, we went back to Lee and Louise's for the night so we could get an early start on Friday for our road trip to Seattle.

The next morning we stopped for gas and the first amusing thing we saw was this sign posted at the gas station.

We felt this got our road trip off to a great start. Before we could even pull across the street for Peet's coffee, I made Jim stop the car so I could take a picture of this mass of daffodils.

I was so excited to see my first Cascade mountain from I-5. This is Mt. Adams.

Here is St. Helens, missing her top.

Our trusty VW van was very comfortable for this trip and we had lots of good music to play.

We stopped for lunch in some nameless town near Camas, Washington at a mediocre Taco del Mar. A bright spot, though, was this gorgeous birch tree in the parking lot.

Even though spring is a little behind in the Northwest, I couldn't help but notice how beautiful all the cherry trees were - maybe because everything else looked so wintry.

One of my favorite portions of all of I-5 is this area just north of Olympia.

The highway dips down here and at the bottom you have a great view of the Nisqually delta and the first view of southern Puget Sound. Unfortunately there were too many cars in the way to get a photo of that treasured view.

But, the first glimpse of Mt. Rainier never fails to thrill me.

Here she is shining over Ft. Lewis, near Tacoma, Washington.

We arrived at my brother Larry and sister-in-law Carolyn's house around 3 pm. They live in Sea Tac (yes, named for the airport) which is just south of Seattle. They are on a lovely little lake, Angle Lake, which is where my Mom first taught school back in about 1936. Here is the view from Larry and Carolyn's porch.

And the next morning, the same view in the fog.

This was a very quick trip to Seattle so we had to visit with Larry and Carolyn when we could. They are both really busy folks even though they are retired. Larry manages an apartment building and is also involved in Bible Study Fellowship, which keeps him on the road quite a bit throughout the Northwest. Carolyn has learned the tax business and now works the season at H&R Block dealing with Spanish-speaking clients. She also continues to lead Vista Mission Teams quite often to Mexico, where they provide glasses and dental services to people. In fact, the next morning, Carolyn had a Vista Team meeting at her house to get ready for the next trip. Here she is checking the time as her team meeting is about to start.

Carolyn is a very organized person. Here she has the uniforms (scrubs) all divvied out by size.

She still has time to have a lovely garden.

Our quick stay with Larry and Carolyn allowed us to pick up a bunch of boxes stored in their cupboard from when we cleaned out Mom and Dad's house last fall. Pretty hard to take thousands of slides on an airplane! We also took advantage of this quick trip to see my Dad and our friend Mike, but those will be on a separate blog, along with our visit with Lee and Louise.

Audrey