A brief change of direction

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Well, we are finally high and dry. We traveled 157 miles from Grayland Beach to Bothell, which is located about 17 miles northeast of downtown Seattle and are enjoying a couple of days with interesting activities and visits with friends.

Until this afternoon it has been wet and cool, but the sun began to find holes in the clouds this afternoon and the weekend weather looks promising.

The main objective of our sudden direction change towards Seattle was to see our Port Orford friend Darren graduate from underwater welding tech school. He worked hard for seven months to learn the safe way to perform the duties of his selected profession and is to be congratulated for his efforts to find a suitable career.

The graduation ceremony was viewed by Darren’s parents (Port Orford RV Village owners Tim and Cindy), his grandmother and brother and by his girlfriend Devon. His family has become a big part of our travel family and we enjoyed joining the group to celebrate his accomplishment.

He will fly to New Orleans tomorrow in search of a job. Good luck Darren!!!

We have settled in at the Lake Pleasant RV Park in Bothell and will leave for a return to Oregon Sunday morning after visiting with other Seattle area friends. This park is not bad at all for a location near a major city and has all the usual amenities at a rather high nightly rate of $44 per night.

All paved interior roads lead to a large number of asphalt RV sites located around the shoreline of the small lake at the center. The pads are fairly level, but access roads are somewhat narrow and fringed with rain soaked grass that can suck truck and trailer wheels down to the axles.

Sites are reasonably spaced and separated by well-trimmed hedges to add privacy. The park is exceptionally quiet despite its location. WiFi service is adequate for our needs but is not included in the nightly rate. Provided by Tengo Internet, the cost is $7.95 for three days of service. Bandwidth hogs are prevented from sucking up service by a fairly generous data usage restriction.

Lake Pleasant is located a couple of miles west of I-405 and is easily accessed from a small highway that runs past the park. Facilities are clean and well maintained and there is plenty of shopping and many restaurants nearby.

We have taken a couple of drives into Seattle to see some of the sights and to join our friends for a fine pizza dinner. We also drove over to All Critters Animal Hospital in Sammamish today to surprise one of our friends who works there. Linda and her husband Steven will be joining us at our rolling villa for dinner tomorrow evening.

After this all too brief visit to the Seattle area, we will make an early morning departure on Sunday, with Salem, Oregon in our sights. We will spend only one night there before returning to the coast and a couple of nights in Newport. Our expectation at this point is to arrive back in Port Orford a few days ahead of the original plan. Juanita really needs to get back to work on her quilting projects.

We have really enjoyed our spring travels despite the cool, wet and windy conditions encountered more often than not. Travel at this time of year is always chancy…as some of our friends are discovering in other parts of the country. Hey, at least we haven’t had snow, floods or tornadoes!

We will check back in with y’all after our return to Oregon………………….

Apr 29, 2011

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