David & Mariam’s Adventures

We’re getting better at planning our outings. Preliminary research indicated that we needed to arrive to the park before 10am to avoid wait times into the park. We wanted to enter the park near Forks, WA which is about a 4 hour drive from our Airbnb, so we decided to leave Friday evening and spend the night in Port Angeles, then drive to the park in the morning. Olympic National Park is on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula in the Pacific Northwest. The park sprawls across several diverse environments – from the  ~8,000 ft glacier topped peaks of Mt. Olympus, to the […]

First things first, and that was making sure the kiddos got up early enough for us to make the ferries. This was by far the most intricate weekend planning to date. We had to secure an Airbnb and also schedule the ferry (there were two of them). Plus we had to time the ferry departure times with the travel by car times. The first ferry at Edmonds was only 10 minutes away and left every 30 minutes. Then it was a 90 minute ride to the second ferry at Port Angeles. That one was much more intricate. There were only 4 departure times and they were all booked, leaving us the only option of first come first served. We needed to arrive at least 3 hours early in order to secure a spot. If we didn’t make it, we would have to wait until the next day. So we asked Francisco and Ariel to be ready for a 6:30am departure. Not good when their usual wake up time is 10am or later. Long story short, we managed to secure a spot on the ferries and made it to Victoria as scheduled.

Mount Ranier is a 2 1/2 hour drive from Seattle…….unless you are leaving mid-day. We made the unfortunate mistake of leaving later than anticipated. We were on I-5 going south into downtown Seattle when just outside the city limits we hit a traffic jam. The dreaded road closures……which caused a 2 HOUR delay getting through downtown Seattle. This made the traffic jams of Houston and Austin look like childs play. If you experienced the evacuation on I-45 for Hurricane Rita, you would be having PTSD right about now. The good news was that it wasn’t hot (we had 60 degree […]

We’ve kind of settled into a routine of work, play, cook & explore. Every morning I video call my Thea Joanna to catch up on the previous day’s activities. Thank you Cassandra for purchasing and showing Thea how to use it. She LOVES it! Sometimes we can add others to the call. This is not a good picture, and I probably should have taken a screenshot instead, but here’s Thea with my sister and I. Pretty cool device specifically designed for the older generation to interact with loved ones. All Thea has to do is hit the button when I […]

Continuing our tourist day out and about in Seattle, we visited the Chihuly Gardens and Glass museum which is located next to the Space Needle. This was a pretty cool place, showcasing the works of Dale Chihuly. There is a museum, gift shop/cafe and outdoor garden. What’s interesting about this museum was that none of the artworks were protected under glass. You could go right up and touch anything – you’re not supposed to, but there’s nothing to stop you other than a single employee in each room to tell you after the fact. There were plenty of lightly supervised […]

July 3, 2022 Our Journey continues to Seattle, Washington, where we are visiting David’s daughter Ariel and son in-law Francisco. We hadn’t seen them since shortly after their wedding in Austin in January 2022, so we were very excited to spend time with them. By the way, they had the most awesome wedding! We arrived SeaTac International Airport on July 1st. Our plan is to stay in the area until August 8th. We layed low for a few days, getting used to our new surroundings. Our airbnb is an upgrade in both comfort and price to the one we had […]