SUMMER VACATION WASHINGTON PART ONE

Olympia Washington

John teaching Luke and Charlotte to play rummy.

Mark, just a swinging

Charlotte eating s'mores.

Luke rescuing Mark from the jungle gym.

Luke caught a butterfly on a Dandelion.

Serious, Prissy, and Happy.

John, Sarah and the kids.

At the Huntsville airport

Ready to leave on our vacation

We just returned Sunday from our epic vacation - adventure. We left on June 21ST from Huntsville and started our trip to Washington State. Of course our trips always involve visiting our children and this trip was no different. Sarah, Cody and the kids are now living in Yelm Washington. We flew from Huntsville to Denver then on to Seattle Washington. Sarah and the kids met us there. It was so good to see all of them. Luke and Charlotte have grown so much, but Mark has really changed. When we saw him before Christmas, before they left, he was just a baby crawling around. Now he is a full blown toddler and still crawling but now it is crawling on top of everything he can get too. He fell off so much stuff while we were there, I was drawn up in a knot for days.

The weather in Washington was just wonderful. When we left Alabama the temps were in the high nineties and low hundreds. When we got to Seattle the temp was like 67 degrees and didn't vary from that more than one or two degrees. We spent eight days in Washington. We enjoyed going to the farmers market where we wondered around for a while. Then we got some of the best seafood we had had in a long time. Clams, shrimp and fish, sold from a food stand there at the market. We also bought fresh cherries that were fresh and sweet and really yummy.

Our main goal for this trip was to spend time with the grand kids. John spent lots of time playing cards and games with Luke and Charlotte. Mark took every opportunity to climb on the table and disrupt the game. We took a side trip down to Oregon where we took a train ride. We went down the night before and stayed in a little town along the Columbia River. The power of that river was amazing to me. The water was swift with lots of white caps. Must have been quite a ride for the settlers that came through years ago. I'm use to seeing big rivers here in the south, but in comparison ours are strong, slower moving, lazy type rivers.

On Sunday we boarded the train at 10:00 and took a four hour trip up through the mountains where we got a wonderful view of Mt Hood. The constant rocking back and forth of the train soon put Mark to sleep and the rest of us were close behind him. We were all just kind of staring out the window in a stupor. The scenery in Washington and Oregon was some of the most beautiful I've ever seen. But that darn rocking of the train was almost to much for a bunch of nappers like us.

John, Sarah and I managed to squeeze in a trip to a casino that was just a few miles form her house. Here again we had no luck, but are just dumb enough to lose our money and still have fun. Go figure.

The days went much to fast. We ended up leaving a day early, because we bought Sarah's car(they bought a newer one) while we were there and decided to drive cross country coming back. We drove down through Oregon, Idaho, Nevada, Wyoming and finally Colorado........