Our general travel route for this week...
Sunday we headed inland from Lincoln City towards Portland. Our plan for the day was to stop briefly at the Bridgeport Village Shopping Center in Tualatin to buy a new iphone for Brian then head back out to Tillamook and the coast. Estimated total driving time about 3 hours. Well, being Sunday morning it was clearly "head back to the city" time for many many people. The traffic was absolutely horrendous, bumper to bumper all the way. It took well over 2 hours just to get to Tualatin so we decided to just stay in Tualatin overnight and not be rushed for the afternoon. The Roamer's Rest RV park is right on OR-99 so we whipped in there and after a bit of looking, the park clerk found a spot open for us (whew).
After dropping off the wee trailer we headed over to the mall and discovered two more reasons why it was good to stop in Tualatin for the night. First, apparently Sunday is some sort of monster shopping day at Bridgeport Village. The place was overrun with shoppers with virtually no place to park. It would have been very difficult to find a parking place with the wee trailer in tow. Second, the Apple store was so busy that we had to wait about an hour for "our turn". Then it took close to an hour to get Brian all set up with an Apple account and get the new phone set up etc etc, but that's all done now. We did a bit more shopping then called it a day with some deli fixings from Fred Meyer for dinner back at the RV park.
Monday morning we planned to drive back out to the coast with the idea of spending a few days from Tillamook to Cannon Beach to Astoria before heading up to Seattle for a couple of days. However looking at the weather forecast for the next 4 or 5 days it looked like the coast was expecting a fair amount of rain. Hmmmm... what to do??? Well, since we are basically "on our way home", we decided to skip the coast (been there many times before and will definitely be there again) and did a reroute directly up I-5 to the KOA in Kent just south of Seattle.
For lunch on the way we picked a random off ramp where there was a sign indicating restaurant(s). We thought Spiffy's off exit 68 sounded good. Turns out this is the same place we randomly picked last year when driving from Portland up to Seattle. Must be some kind of omen! Anyway, huge breakfasts and quite tasty. Good place to stop and they have lots of parking even for larger rigs.
After checking in at the KOA we headed over to Southcenter Mall for an iced latte and a browse around for a bit. After wandering around the mall Kris went over to Nordstrom Rack and Brian drove off to the Rockler Woodworking store. Not much in the way of purchases but Brian did pick up some castors for a new workbench to be built when we get home. For dinner we stopped in at California Pizza Kitchen then, on the way back to the KOA, the BevMo store for some wine.
Tuesday we drove into downtown Seattle. Last year we found a good route from the KOA into Seattle, take I-405/WA-518 towards Burien then WA-509 directly north into downtown via 1st Street. Along the way we stopped at Daniel Smith for some painting and drawing supplies. We parked in the large Macy's parkade, had lunch at Nordstrom then wandered around and through stores for a couple of hours before heading back to the KOA, hoping to avoid the bulk of rush hour and to catch the American League wild card playoff game. When we got back to the KOA we found that we were not at a site with cable. DRAT... oh well, Kris found the game on an internet radio channel and we settled back with a bottle of wine and listened to the game won in extra innings by the Kansas City Royals. Excellent game.
Wednesday we packed up and headed over to Bainbridge Island on the Olympic Peninsula. We got there around lunch time and after managing to find parking, with the wee trailer, we walked along the main street to the Streamliner Diner for a late breakfast. Afterwards we made our way to Churchmouse Yarns where we had the opportunity to meet and chat with Kit Hutchin, the owner, who happens to be from Kitimat.
Leaving Bainbridge Island we stopped at the Starbucks in Poulsbo for an iced latte for the road then continued north on the peninsula to Sequim where we had a booking at the Gilgal Oasis RV Park for the night. It was quite windy with possible rain so we decided to check out a local eatery for dinner. We chose the 7th Avenue Steakhouse where we had, without a doubt, the worst meals of this trip. Bad choice!!!
At least the wine back at the trailer was good and the Giants won the NL wild card game so the evening wasn't a total loss.
Thursday morning we were up ultra early in order to have time to get packed up, stop at the Starbucks in Safeway for a couple of coffee and get to the ferry terminal early (since we didn't have a reservation) although there ended up being plenty of room on the ferry. After a nice smooth ferry ride over to Victoria we did a bit of looking at Chintz & Company (to get ideas for trailer cushion re-upholstering), Opus (just looking) and Capital Iron (because it just looked interesting) before heading north towards home.
We stopped in Duncan for a brief visit with Uncle Bob and Aunt Phyllis and were pleased that they are doing quite well. Then after a quick stop at Chapters in Nanaimo we continued on and arrived home early evening.
End of this most excellent trip.
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