Good Thursday folks! I slept great last night. I think having Melissa and Regan back in the fold took a load off my mind. I was worried about them having problems with the flight up and was happy when I got word that they had arrived and my cousin Sam had picked them up. They did have some problems. Number one was that they had to fly out of New Orleans since Southwest left Jackson and flying non-SW would have cost nearly $1,000 more. In addition, when they arrived in New Orleans it was at the culmination of the Essence Fest. They almost missed the flight and once on the plane, still the drama continued as a girl  on their next connecting flight out of Houston had a full on panic attack at the thought of flying and she had to be taken off the plane. This made their arrival in Portland run 40 minutes behind schedule.

So today is Seattle day. When I say Seattle, really it's Anacortes which is an hour north of Seattle. It's the jumping off spot for tomorrow's whale watching trip. If you look at the map below, you'll see that from Olympia where to traffic begins to Anacortes is 2.5 hours. This is two and a half hours of tough traffic and I'm glad now to be done with it.

Annacortes is a quaint little sea fairing community here in Washington. This is the view from my room, note the snow capped mountain in the background. You can see it but just beyond those trees is the bay.

Dinner tonight is Bob's Chowder Bar just across the street. I tried a mix of several things. The fish taco was very nice with just a bit of heat. The grilled cheese was on sourdough with three antisense cheeses. Lastly a cup of their chowder which was the best I've ever had. All with an Alaskan Brewing Summer Ale. Perfect!

The funny thing about the northwest is that it stays light until almost 10:00. Last night I crashed at 9:45 feeling the weight of the last 6 days on the bike catching up. When I laid down, I could still still see it was light outside. I just checked the sunrise/sunset schedule. Crazy stuff:

So, until tomorrow, I bit you adieu!