The Great Escape: Day 8

Day 8 (Tuesday, Sept 7):  We left Kate and Mark’s early in the morning and headed to Seattle. I’m not sure what to say about Seattle, except that I realize the older I get, the less I like cities. Like one of my favorite authors, Jeanmarie Laskas, points out “Being in the city makes me need filters!” I find huge cities to be kind of overwhelming in the vast amounts of traffic, people, traffic, people, buildings… and not enough air to breathe (or something like that) and generally claustrophobic.  Anyway, some of us are city people and some aren’t. As far as cities go, Seattle isn’t bad. We arrived, parked on the waterfront, and changed into pants in the car (much to Katie’s horror). The waterfront was nice to walk along and even in a city, I love being on the water. We enjoyed the famous Pike’s Place market and the beautiful sites therein. Wandered to the Needle to decide it was way too expensive to warrant a trip up. And somewhere in here, while the city-person in our midst was marveling over cool buildings, Reenie lost the will to live. We eventually got lunch and then headed to have coffee with Katie’s aunt who lives in a suburb of Seattle.

And then we headed north to my brother-in-law Mark’s parent’s house… which is much more my speed. Farming country. Outside a very small town. Surrounded by cornfields, rivers, and the mountains in the distance. I could so live there.  We got out of the car and all you could hear was silence—music to my country-girl soul. We had an amazing dinner—seriously, we are still talking about the meal we had there! Almost everything was home grown and it was quite simple but AMAZING. Garden fresh salad, homemade applesauce from the apple tree out back, mashed potatoes, gravy, tomatoes. I think when I die and go to heaven, we will eat like that every day. 

Not to mention that Fred and Anne are some of the cutest people I know. I just love them. Fred insisted I tell my crazy traveling to Montana story since apparently he’d been dying to hear it again since the first time he heard it. Then he told stories, Philip (Mark’s brother) also came and we showed trip pictures and hung out. Did I mention how great they are?  And they have an awesome greenhouse (greenhouse envy). I want to be them when I grow up.  We went to bed in the Veen loft and got up early to head south again. I wish we had more time up there, with the Veens and exploring that gorgeous part of the world. Maybe next time. 

The Great Escape: Day 6 & 7

 Day 6, Sunday, Sept. 5: I got woken up quite early (once again, I was on the couch) by sweet Ellie (before 7 am). Ordinarily I wouldn’t have chosen to get up quite that early after a late night, but honestly, I’m mush over that girlie. She just crawled onto the couch with me and we snuggled for awhile before we were joined by her brothers, who were also excited to see me (though I might win for being the most excited) so we just got up early and read stories, rolled around the floor, and enjoyed being together. Ben is an avid reader these days and can always be found with a book. Andrew reminds me of a puppy—rolling all over his brother, sister, me. Always very busy and happy and downright sweet. Eventually the other adults in the household woke up and we had a good breakfast, showered, and headed for Mass.

 It was a gorgeous day there in Richland, WA. The sun was shining, the weather was mid-seventies and there was a lovely breeze. I really enjoyed just relaxing—hang out with my some of my favorite people, being out of the car, ahhhh. Life is good. Kathleen and Mark’s yard is gorgeous- pretty secluded by hedges from the neighbors and has some big shade trees. My dad had visited a few days earlier and helped put up swings for all the kids, so they spent a lot of time on those great swings and Ben was practicing jumping onto the rope swing and going really high. “Look at me! Take a picture of this!” As you might guess, there are a lot of blurry pictures of Ben as he zooms by on his cool rope swing.


After dinner we went to one of their favorite parks that is along the Columbia river. It is really pretty. It has a great walking path and a biking path along the river that connects to other parks all along the river front. And then we wrapped up the evening playing games after the kids were in bed.  

Day 7 (Monday, Sept 6): Once again, I had some very cute early morning visitors. After breakfast we went to a souvenir type shop to get nerdy t-shirts (well, mine isn’t that nerdy) and then headed to a peach orchard just outside town. We picked over 100 lbs of peaches for Kathleen to can. My first time actually picking peaches! It was another gorgeous sunny, breezy, pleasant day in Richland. Mark, Ben and I drove out to see the Hanford area where Mark is working (though we couldn’t go to his actual job site). It was neat to hear about the area and Mark’s job, etc. Meanwhile Kathleen took the others home to get lunch ready. While the kids napped, the adults played games and visited. We had another great dinner, another evening walk at the river, and then my parents came back from visiting my relatives in Oregon. We were just overlapping our visits this one evening. My mom wasn’t feeling good so she went straight down to bed while the rest of us visited, looked up rafting places near Salt Lake City, and heard stories from my cousin’s wedding in Oregon.  

The Great Escape: Day 5 Continued...

Like I said, we left Lisa and Glen’s just before noon and continued making our way west. We stopped to see the Lincoln Grizzly – who was apparently hit by a car and then stuffed and is now on display for all to see. He’s big. Also, only you can prevent forest fires. Don’t forget that. 



This was also the day Reenie made an error and took a “scenic route”… and not just any scenic route… I like making good time on the road, but I also like to see the beautiful country as we go through it, so I do occasionally opt for a scenic route. This particular route was around Coeur D’Alene in Idaho. It was a huge and gorgeous lake, we’d been in the car for a long while and I admit, I WASN’T thinking clearly!! And the scenic route appeared to just swoop gracefully along the lake, nice and easy, and head back to the main highway. (We didn’t have the advantage of googlemap in the car with us, just Janice the retarded GPS and Katie’s dad’s trusty road atlas). How could you go wrong? Well, let me tell you… First there was that gas station with the huge cow out front, right before leaving Montana, where I went in for chapstick, and we left with two ice cream cones, two hot dogs (yes, you read that right, HOT DOGS from a GAS STATION), two bags of chips, and chapstick. Nice.

Back to the scenic route story (remember the gas station hot dogs).  As it turns out, this particular scenic route consists of two hours (TWO HOURS) of 25-35 mph speeds because we followed every blasted curve on this huge lake, going up and down huge hills and around hairpin turns, with no guardrails the whole way. I was driving and not loving it (though the lake was beautiful, the driving was kind of stressful). However, the passenger in the backseat who had eaten one of those gas station hot dogs was really not loving it. Trying to not throw up she laid back there in agony, cold bottle pressed against her face, pillow over her eyes, listening to my rabid “Why the heck aren’t there guard rails!?!?” Poor Leslie.

We eventually escaped the scenic route (and no one threw up!), found footless Paul Bunyan, and ended up taking a slower but more direct route through the rolling hills of eastern Washington. More farm envy from Reenie. Gorgeous country. And no more gas station hot dogs, so we were okay with the turns and steep grades. We finally made it to Kathleen and Mark’s after the kids were in bed. Great to see them, great to make it all the way out here.