RV Travels With Huggy

There is a group of us old school buddies who have been getting together each summer in Spokane, WA, where we all grew up, just to stay in contact, find out what all has been happening in each others lives and just plan have fun. This summer the group, which we loosely call "The Old Coots Club," decided to take a road trip to the Seattle area from Spokane for a couple of days rather than the Seattle area bunch going to Spokane. That trip was this last weekend and on Saturday, after a breakfast in the Kirkland area, four of the group came up to Skagit County, my home stomping grounds.

We met at our house which was an opportunity to show the place to them, three of whom had not been here before. Then we went to lunch together at the Garden Cafe inside the Skagit Gardens retail sales greenhouse, followed by a tour of part the area.


Our tour went out the Fir Island Road to La Conner. This is a scene looking down the channel toward the Rainbow Bridge. The eagle is an example of some of the public art that is on display in this town. It is very tourist oriented and has some nice things on public display as well as many galleries.


Another must see place is the waterway known as Deception Pass. Here is found some very fast tidal flow when the tides are moving into or out of Puget Sound. All of the water does not go through here but enough does to make this somewhat hazardous to boat traffic, especially if you are trying to go against the tide flow. Don't try this in a canoe or sail boat under sail! You won't make it as you can't go as fast as the tide. This is one of the two Deception Pass bridges, the longer one that goes from the small island in the middle of the channel to Whidbey Island. The only access for autos to Whidbey is via this bridge or one of two Washington State Ferry System boat routes. The island is long, extending south to where the other end is just off Mukilteo, where the ferry goes out to the town of Clinton.


This is the shorter of the two bridges, the one that goes from the mainland to the small island. The photo has one of our Old Coots Club walking back from the bridge where he went to take a photo. The traffic was very heavy on this day. With beautiful weather on a Saturday, lots of people were out and about both in autos and boats.


We finished the day off with a dinner together at Grazie, an Italian restaurant in the north Bothell area, between Mt. Vernon and Seattle. We prevailed on our waiter to take this photo with my small Sony camera and he did a nice job of it. Pat went along to lunch and dinner, but stayed home puttering in the garden rather than going along on our tour. I drove the Smart Car on the Coots Tour and three of them got a ride in it but since Pat doesn't want to ride in it on the freeway, we took our big car to Bothell, the VW New Beetle.

Our group does a pretty good job of staying in contact via email. I think we are finding that it is good to stay in contact with old friends as we grow older. We are all retired now so have more time to travel. One of us comes all the way from New York, two from California, three from the Seattle area, one from Vancouver, WA and three are in the Spokane area although one of them is a full time RVer so does move around. They will all have to change my email address after this next Saturday as we are changing our ISP. But they will figure that out.

Labels: Friends, Landscapes, Pat and I, Photos, Reminiscing