A Little Road tripping to the Pacific Northwest

We just returned from a little vacation to the beautiful Northwest.

I guess it was an official road trip, since it included six days in the car (plus one day with no traveling) and 2,500 miles (and about that many photos)!

We spent the first two days traveling with our daughter Heidi and her two children as we accompanied them to Tacoma, Washington where she met up with her husband.

My husband and I then spent some time in Port Townsend and Seattle, Washington, and Crater Lake, Oregon. 

Since I’m sure no one wants a play-by-play account of our trip, I’m just going to post some of my million photos.  Everyone likes pictures, right?

Here goes:

This trip involved a lot of sitting and looking out windows.  Since it was such a lot of driving, many of my photos were shot from the windows of the car.  Stops were for bathroom breaks and gas only.

We enjoyed a tasty cookie treat break at this rest stop in Oregon.

Ken’s sister Carolyn baked us these yummy butterscotch oatmeal cookies to bring along.  Thanks, Carolyn!  They were a perfect treat.

The kids were troupers to travel with, but road construction and rush hour traffic  almost put us over the top as we inched our way the last few hours.  Our GPS routed us off the freeway near Tacoma, but after getting behind a school bus unloading kids (Ken likened it to one of those commercials where clowns keep getting out of a little Volkswagen-it didn’t seem to end).  It gave us some comic relief after a stressful drive, but I’m pretty sure we didn’t save any time.

We finally arrived at our first destination, the home of Heidi’s in-laws.  They recently moved here from Bucharest, Romania to be closer to their children.  We enjoyed a wonderful meal they had prepared for us.  They were gracious and kind.

Ken and I spent that night in Port Townsend, Washington.

We arrived late at night, but our view the next morning was quite lovely.  This was the view from our hotel room deck.

My husband surprised me with this hotel.  I thought we were headed to his sister’s house near Seattle.  (We’d had some debates about where we wanted to go, and I thought I’d lost this argument, so it was a really nice gift!)

We explored the quaint town; loved the historic old Victorian homes, charming bed and breakfasts, an old Fort, charming downtown, and views of the sea.  The historic town was the entry for all shipping and trade going in to Puget Sound.

It was a fun destination and I loved wandering around the colorful streets of this city.  We even got in a lot of walking-a welcome relief from sitting in the car the two days before.

The northwest has had a very dry summer (someone told us it had been 80 days without rain) and many of the lawns were suffering, but the homes were still lovely.

Every perfect autumn day vacation stop needs a farmer’s market, too.

The PTFF (film festival) was going on and lots of movie premiers were presented in buildings on the main street, and in an outdoor theater complete with straw bales as seating.

Gotta love a town with hanging flower baskets!

 Lest this experience become a prop-your-eyes-open-and-endure-it-slide-show, I’m going to break it into several parts. 

One last look at the lovely Port Townsend, Washington.

P.S. What fun little towns do you like exploring?

JoAnn