–Sat­ur­day June 30th Morn­ing–
Last year ASCO offered a deal with National Car Rental, you could join their Emer­ald Club at no cost and get up to a 20% dis­count, so I opted in think­ing I’d never use it, but it might be worth check­ing out the next time we rented a car.

As luck would have it, for this trip to Seat­tle, they we a lit­tle less than the price of the sec­ond tier agency we usu­ally use, so we stepped up a bit on rental car com­pany ladder.

When the taxi* dropped us off at the rental car place we were sur­prised that there was not a soul around to help us, just an empty com­puter ter­mi­nal and a sea of cars.

*Our plane got into Seat­tle at mid­night Fri­day, so we took a shut­tle to our hotel to get a 1/2 nights sleep. When we got up Sat­ur­day morn­ing rather than take the hotel shut­tle back to the air­port and then get a rental car shut­tle from the air­port to the off-site rental place we took a taxi to make it one shorter ride instead of two longer ones. I’ve got anin­ter­est­ing taxi ride story for another day.

Think­ing there must be some kind of mis­take we go up one flight on the esca­la­tor to the rental coun­ters. The nice lady put down her cross­word, looked at my paper­work, said that all I needed to do was go back down and pick any car from the inter­me­di­ate aisle.

There were a bunch of Chevy Impalas sit­ting about, but then I spot­ted a famil­iar pro­file. It was a 2012 GLS (AKA base model), only a year newer that the Pur­ple Whale, so at least all the con­trols would be right where I was used to them being. It had only 4,000 miles more on the odome­ter, so all the inte­rior panel rat­tles were right where we were used to them being too.

–Mon­day July 2nd–
We love Bed & Break­fasts when we travel and try to make them account for at least 40% of our overnight stays. A lot of times they work out to be about the same cost as a nice hotel room.

One of the down­sides to B & B’s is that you never know what you are going to get. I imag­ine it is a lit­tle like inter­net dat­ing, it is pretty easy to enhance your per­ceived pos­i­tives and down­play or out­right omit your weak­nesses. That said, we have only been really dis­ap­pointed twice, once in Arkansas and once in New Mexico.

A big pos­i­tive for almost every­one, but is very often another down­side for us, is the break­fast. At these types of lodg­ings, break­fast is usu­ally served late, a lot of times it won’t start until 9:00AM. We are early ris­ers so as to jam as much fun as we can into each day of vaca­tion (we can rest at work.) Plus break­fast is typ­i­cally some­thing fancy and very rich, not our usual bagel, grits or cold cereal repast. We always wished we could find a B & B with­out the sec­ond B, that way we could eat what we wanted and when we wanted and now that we also have to tack on Donna’s new dietary restric­tions, find­ing that sort of place would be awe­some. Enter the Juniper Lane Guest House in Fri­day Har­bor on San Juan Island.

On the inter­net it looks per­fect, B & B style rooms, nice price, free WiFi, a casual com­mon area, cool con­cept and with access to a full kitchen all day. The inn is far enough from the town, but not too far to be incon­ve­nient for shop­ping or din­ing and the innkeeper is friendly, invit­ing and has a very laid back west-coast vibe. We man­aged to have both break­fasts and one lunch in the house’s kitchen.

The only neg­a­tive about the Juniper Lane Guest House was because the sum­mer weather on the island is such that it begs to have the win­dows in the room flung wide open, mean­ing you hear any traf­fic that passes by right out front on one of the island’s main north-south routes. And as it turns out, there is quite a bit of traf­fic on that road until late at night.

Move this build­ing about 50 yards fur­ther off the road and it would prob­a­bly be in the top 5 places we have ever stayed at.

–Tues­day July 3rd Morn­ing–
The Day dawns cloudy and misty, but undaunted we set set off for the south end of the island to do a geo­cache or two. We drove as far as we could on that end of island and were going to go find Cape Cache work our way back to Fri­day Har­bor. As we drove it was sprin­kling lightly, but when we parked to caching it started to come down heav­ier than we wanted to endure just to find an ammo can.

We turned around and drove about a mile back and the rain eased back to its pre­vi­ous driz­zle level so we stopped, think­ing of walk­ing on a trail along the coast to the Cat­tle Point Light. Driz­zle, wind and mid fifties temps sent us back to the car after about 100 yards of trail. As we drove up the hill away from Cat­tle Point I pulled over and took a cou­ple pho­tos of the light.

Next stop was the Amer­i­can Camp of the San Juan Island National His­tor­i­cal Park. By now it had stopped mist­ing so we headed out for hike on the park’s trails. We vis­ited Grandma’s Cove and then promptly missed our turn for the trail to South Beach end­ing up at the site of the actual Amer­i­can Camp. We did still man­age to get a cou­ple miles of walk­ing in anyway.

We never did make it back to the British Camp on the north part of the Island that we briefly poked our head into last night. The rea­son for these two camps had to do with the word­ing of an 1846 treaty between the US and Eng­land set­ting the bound­aries between the two coun­ties and in 1859 brought them to the brink of war once again over the killing of a pig.

Because we are already plan­ning a week’s visit next year and would like a qui­eter place to stay, right after leav­ing the park’s bor­ders we see a sign for the Olympic Lights B & B. We wanted some­thing a lit­tle fur­ther from the road, well this one cer­tainly fits that require­ment, it is behind a gate and is about a 1/4 mile down a pri­vate one-lane road. We invite our­selves inside and met the inn keep­ers and like what we see, so this might be the place for 2013.

After leav­ing the B & B, Donna real­ized we were only a few hun­dred feet from a geo­cache. The rain had quit, so we thought, “What the heck.“I parked the car and we bushwacked into the wet weeds. As we wan­dered deeper into the woods I real­ized that even though the rain had quit we were not to be spared get­ting soaked. Once at ground zero we made short work of find­ing the con­tainer and sign­ing the log. By the time we got back to the car after wad­ing through the knee high weeds our jeans were soaked all the way up to the pock­ets. So we headed back to the guest house to take a break and change into some dry clothes.

–Wednes­day July 4th (Cont.)-
Beth won­dered in an email to us sev­eral weeks prior to our visit as to why we would want to go to her par­ents 4th of July cook­out as there would be noth­ing but red­necks there. I don’t know, every­one we met there seemed per­fectly nor­mal to us. Maybe, as Jeff Fox­wor­thy would (did) say, “You might be a red­neck if you are sur­rounded by red­necks and don’t notice.”

The food was the usual fare for a cook­out, hot dogs, chicken and a plethora of side dishes found any­where you find peo­ple eat­ing out­doors. There was one unusual thing that did set this gath­er­ing apart from any other cook­out I had attended — Slug Races.

Slugs are the Offi­cial Gas­tro­pod of the state of Wash­ing­ton and they are every­where, so it makes it easy to round up a racer. An offi­cial race course con­sists of a set of con­cen­tric cir­cles marked off on a white sur­face. The smaller cir­cle is the start­ing area and the larger cir­cle is the fin­ish line. The dis­tance between the two is directly pro­por­tional to the patience of the race jockeys.

In the photo above the slugs from left to right are exactly in the order of their fin­ishes. Nephew James’ slug, Slimy Speed­ster, was the win­ner, my slug, Gal­lop­ing Gas­tro, placed a dis­tant sec­ond and Donna’s Movin’ Mol­lusc showed in third. The other two con­tes­tants never left the start­ing gate.

We fin­ished the day off back just up the street from Scott and Beth’s house at their church where we made s’mores and watched the night sky explode with light. Because they live on a small ridge that over­looks the Sno­homish River Val­ley we got to see thou­sands, of bursts of light from right next door, to the glut explod­ing over the Tulalip reser­va­tion to the mas­sive show over the town of Everett.

–Fri­day July 6th–
Travel Day. We had a leisurely break­fast at the hotel, packed the car and looked at the time. It was an hour trip to the air­port and 5 hours until the plane took off. We always like to get to the air­port early because you never know how long it will take to get through Secu­rity, but 4 hours was a bit too much.

So we broke out the map and the ferry sched­ule. It is always enjoy­able com­ing into Seat­tle that way because of the great view of the sky­line. We hugged the coast as best we could from Muk­il­teo to Edmonds which took us along quiet neigh­bor­hood street past homes with views we wish we could afford.

After a wait of 20–30 min­utes in Edmonds we were directed onto the M/V Spokane for the half hour ferry ride to Kingston. Once back on dry land there was a short 16 mile drive to the Town of Bain­bridge Island for the next ferry ride. We just missed the 10:25 to Seattle.

Because there was about an hour before the next depar­ture, we took a walk around the ferry load­ing area and stum­bled on some­thing you don’t very often, a bicy­cle garage. Folks who live on Bain­bridge Island and work in Seat­tle will ride their bike to the ferry, walk on the boat and walk (or catch a bus) to their office in down­town. You basi­cally rent a ver­ti­cal rack to hang your bike on with a small locker for hel­met and shoes, etc. They have room for about 75 bikes with 10 or so set aside as first come first serve. While we were chat­ting up the fel­low in the back room he told us there was a short trail that would take us over to the his­toric part of the town if we wanted, so just to stretch our legs a bit, we walked it part way before turn­ing around and head­ing back to the car as we didn’t want to miss this ferry.

When we drove off the M/V Tacoma we were deposited into down­town Seat­tle at 12:05PM on a work­day. The car traf­fic was thick as we edged up Mar­ion St the 4 blocks to 2nd Ave where the GPS was telling us to turn right. At each light it took at least two cycles to get through because pedes­tri­ans have the right of way and there were herds of them walk­ing to get lunch, so only about two cars could turn at each green.

We finally made a right on 2nd Ave. and the GPS said, “Turn right on Colum­bia St.” Once on Colum­bia St the GPS said, “Turn right on 1st Ave.” OK, we’ll play that, but it sure seems like we are going in a cir­cle. On 1st Ave it said, “Turn right on Mar­ion St.” Alrighty then. Once on Mar­ion, sure enough it said, “Turn right on 2nd Ave.” It was tak­ing us in a cir­cle! I told Donna to hit the mute but­ton and I drove up to 4th Ave. and turned right, which was head­ing south and in the gen­eral direc­tion of the air­port. We drove past Cen­tury Link Field (home of the Sea­hawks) and then Safeco Field (home of the Mariners) and got lucky; there was a sign for I-90 & I-5.

We were now had about an hour and half until our plane took off and we still had a 15 minute drive to the rental car return place, return the car, catch a shut­tle to the ter­mi­nal, check our bags, clear secu­rity and walk to the gate. Get­ting tight. But that bit of luck in find­ing the Inter­state entrance kept right on com­ing. Traf­fic on I-5 was backed up going north, but south was mov­ing smoothly. Drop­ping off the car was the usual easy and there was a shut­tle bus wait­ing on us. Bag check-in was pain­less and we were star­tled to find the usual Disney-esque wind­ing queue for secu­rity to be non exis­tent. We ended up mak­ing it to the gate with about 15 min­utes before first board­ing call.

Turned out we even had more time than that, as depar­ture was delayed by about 30 min­utes because the plane wasn’t ready, but that expe­ri­ence was a lit­tle too close for our comfort.