Washington & Oregon Days 1-3

After nearly two weeks in the Pacific Northwest, we are happy and safely home. Our departure was marked by the usual chaos- the day before we left, we spent four nail-biting hours at the boy's karate tournament (Ry improved a lot from last year, so we were grateful) before we spent the evening hosting Rich's post-production cast party. So the days prior to our leaving were hurriedly spent cleaning our dirty house, packing for cold weather and lots of work/sports for the three of us.

It was not all for naught though, our trip (which we jokingly referred to as the 'meh' trip since we were staying stateside and not jetting off somewhere exotic) went really well. I mean, it's standard that one of us get sick and before infecting all the others- Ryan went down first on day 3 with a cough/sore throat, followed by Rich a few days later, who also badly twisted his ankle on day 1, with Joey and I falling ill toward the latter end of our trip. Thankfully, we all managed to stay upright enough to get everything done that we'd hoped to (and more).

Our first day was spent getting there, and our second was spent doing the usual downtown tourist stuff as it's been awhile since Ryan last visited the city...we hit Pikes Place, found my family's favorite fried chicken booth, went to the very first Starbucks (who knew it was in Pikes Place?), inhaled some Beecher's mac and cheese and cheese curds, found some artisanal jerkies for my dad (the priciest bag would later be stolen/eaten by Joey's dog), went Pokemon hunting for 'mainland' Pokemon, took Ryan to add his contribution to the Gum Wall, etc.

Our third day was an unscheduled trip up to gorgeous, snow-covered Mt. Rainier. The drive from Tacoma was about 2-3 hours, as we stopped a few times to take in all the green Pacific Northwest beauty. Though Ry's been extremely fortunate to have played in snow in some pretty cool places (Hawaii, Iceland, Morocco, New York City), he's never gone sledding or skiing before...so we were able to buy a sled and tick one off those off the list! It was pretty exhausting hiking up and down the mountain (even though we were at less than half the elevation of Mauna Kea's snow), not to mention fuh-reezing...but it was well worth the adventure! Ry had a ball and his stamina was impressive compared to my extensive huffing and puffing and terror from slipping on slushy ice.

On the way home, we stopped at a cute, kitschy train hotel/restaurant (we'd stayed/dined at one in Amish Country, Pennsylvania years ago with Ryan during his train phase, but he of course has no recollection of it) for some insanely overpriced, mediocre food (we hadn't seen the menu before we made the grand announcement to Ryan of where we'd be dining). Overpriced or not, it was still fun and we easy-to-please-cause-we're-off-the-rock-and-ANYTHING-is-fun-people had a great time.

I have a million pics of the day, but I'm trying to stick to my 'tone it down on the Ryan pictures' commitment, so this will be a short post. :-)