Awake: 6:25am Temp 59 sleep 6+20 sunny overnight @ Bothell, WA.
Kathy makes sourdough pancakes with eggs & bacon for breakfast as a
birthday treat.
@ 8:00am, my sister Corinne calls from Lilly, PA with birthday wishes.
Around 1:20pm, daughter Katrina calls from Rawlins, WY en route to
Yellowstone with 3 friends who join her in singing a “happy birthday”
message to me.
Sometime later, my ole buddy Mark in Navarre, Ohio sends a splendid e-mail
covering my special birthday day.
We have BIG plans for later today: We want to buy more organic milk, tuna
steaks & sword fish steaks from Trader Joes for our eastbound travels
starting tomorrow. Also our boys have scheduled an Isilon tour of their
new building & Nick has free tickets for the Mariners baseball game for
later tonight.
Meanwhile, Kathy does 2 laundry loads & irons clothes while I clean the
windshield & outside mirrors, hose off the slide out tops, let dry & start
retracting the slides. I want to get ready for a somewhat early departure
tomorrow. As we sit inside our coach taking a break, a fellow came by &
told us: “you have to leave!” The max stay is 14 days & our campsite is
reserved. Oh, my gosh! We goofed. We did a fast check & sure enough, today
is leaving day.
I talked with the office people: they are booked solid & turning away
customers without reservations.
We hustle to finish up……Kathy with her laundry, me with the slides & water
connection. Within 30min, we pull away from our campsite, drive the coach
500 ft & connect our tow car in the hook-up area. After 3 calls to local
“full” campgrounds, we do as someone suggested: drive north 25 miles on
I-5 & dry camp @ the Tulalip Casino RV Park. There is no charge & they
have security. We call the boys to alert them that we may be running
behind schedule.
With the coach on battery power & parked nicely alongside of other motor
homes, we drive the Suzuki south on I-5 to Queen Anne hill; Along the way
on I-5, Melissa calls with birthday wishes. I'm not supposed to talk too
long while driving according to the experts, but we enjoyed a few
exchanges of:"what's happening?" anyway.
Then shop @ Trader Joes; unload our perishables in Eriko’s fridge; spend a
little time talking with Jerry & watching him try to talk with us; then,
with Eriko & Jerry, we walk downtown to the Isilon building where Nick,
Zack & Katie are patiently waiting to give us a tour. Even though we are
behind schedule, the boys give us a good tour of the 2 floors they are
leasing in this new impressive downtown building.
Next we all take the city bus & transfer to Safeco Field Stadium to watch
the Mariners vs. the Tampa Bay Devil Rays baseball game. Those free
tickets gave us a high advantage. K & I haven’t been to a major league
game since high school so it was pretty neat just being there. We had
snacks with us: a bag of mixed nuts, a bag of sourdough pretzels & some
Kettle Corn that I purchased before going into the stadium. The boys
bought some garlic French fries to share with their ladies & we all
(except Katie and Eriko) had a beer or 2.
We left during the 8th inning as to get a head start for getting to our
respective resting nests for the night; a good & thoughtful plan of Nick’s
which Kathy & I bungled big time. I’ll explain: 1st of all, K & I were
unaware of the items we could NOT bring into the stadium, like a hard
plastic or metal cooler, full water bottles unless it was for a child,
etc. So we left our water bottles in our cooler & I took it across the
street where a vendor agreed to store it until the end of the game. That
part worked fine. After we exited the game during the 8th inning, I had to
retrieve our cooler from across the street. During that short time period,
the #56 bus came by & the gang couldn’t take that it without leaving me
lost by myself on a dark night (on my birthday, too, I might add).
Nick tried to convince us to wait in the “direct shuttle to downtown”
pick-up area for the first direct downtown shuttle, but all the while many
taxis were loading & taking people from that same spot to their respective
residences. It wasn’t easy for us but we overpowered Nick to move further
down the street to a regular bus stop where we “oh so casually waited for
over an hr” for the regular bus & watched the direct shuttle busses pass
us by fully loaded with fans leaving the stadium. Nick was a champion
through it all, even showing us how to deep breathe; his Dad & Mom felt
really bad, but….the good part was, we kept our cool, the Mariners won the
game, and we did make it back to Nick’s condo.
We say our goodbyes & thanks to Zack & Katie for the extra things they did
for us during our wonderful visit & wish them a fun time during Katie’s
stay in Seattle with Zack.
@ Nick’s condo, I bring in our computer for “one more item” for Nick to
simply fix up, then we get our milk, fish etc out of their fridge, say our
thanks & goodbyes for such a great visit & remind them how nice it was
seeing them + our 3rd grandson, Jerry, so many times.
En route back to our bus, we make a stop @ the Safeway store @ the bottom
of Queen Anne hill to check for the right price on wine. Sure enough,
another good deal but we only replaced the ones we emptied recently.
@ Marysville, we make a quick stop @ the Super Wal-Mart to stock up on my
Lindt Dark Chocolate 70% cocoa candy bars & yogurt.
High temp=83 Lights out: 1:32am
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