We have had an eventful month. We spent time with our son at his rocket launch - a 12-foot rocket which was worked on for a year. Chuck is a go-fer but looking forward to being part of the tech crew. It was pretty exciting to see it go up! Here's Chuck - and yes, he has an orange tail in his hair.
Next we visited Newport, OR. We stayed at a park ON the coast. We must have been less than 100' from the ocean! This was the view out our front window for those few days.
One night there was an incredible sunset - again, right in front of us. What a gorgeous world!
We went to Portland, OR for a few days to spend more time with Chuck and his wife Erica. Here we are at a special ice cream place where you can get a "flight" of ice creams, any flavors you choose. Needless to say, that was fun!
We took the kids on a river boat cruise. Great fun until the boat caught on fire. Memo to self: not as much fun when the boat catches fire!
Then we spent a couple of weeks in the northwest corner of the Olympic Peninsula, near Port Townsend. We really like the area and plan to come back, perhaps next summer. One highlight was a whale-watching tour. Four hours of driving around looking for whales - and one of them we spent between the US and Canada, in close proximity to a pod of transient orcas. They are my favorite type of wildlife: so lively and beautiful!
On to Seattle to visit our daughter, Genevieve, and her wife, Molly. It was wonderful to see them again! We had dinner at their house one night, and one night went out. Both were fun evenings for us all.
We also took in a chocolate tour of Seattle while we were there. The tour goes to six different chocolate places, where you get a sample of two or three of their items, from a cupcake to sipping chocolate to a cacao bean (bitter!) to fancy caramels. This was the last place we visited. It looked a lot like a jewelry store, and the prices matched, too.
This portrait was made from pictures of their various chocolates in their little wrapper cups. I could eat there all day, but it's too expensive! Actually, by the time we tried 16 different treats, even I was sick of chocolate. So worth it, though!
We are in Yakima this week, in eastern Washington. All people can talk about is the horrible fires in the area. We are close enough to smell the smoke quite easily. There are air quality warnings until Wednesday (at this point - they keep extending the warning) and you are not supposed to exercise outdoors. Schools may be canceling outside recess once the kids are back, this week or next.
Genevieve and Molly went to Chelan to attend a wedding a couple of weekends ago, just when the fire started in that area. The entire wedding had to be moved on the day of the wedding to another town because Chelan (pronounced shu-LAN, like land) was evacuated suddenly. Still, the couple did get married and everyone made it to the wedding.
We'll begin heading south in a few weeks, so we're trying to enjoy some cool temperatures while we can. It seems everywhere we have been has been hotter than usual. I'm almost wishing for snow. But not quite!
