People having a great time

Tuesday, April 15, 2025

We knew there were chickens on our hotel property and we saw a red light glowing in a coop looking building last night. Keith went over to check it out this morning and reported “NOT chickens”.

It was a baby emu!! He was running fast, with very heavy sounding foot steps. He is striped, like a baby watermelon or a baby tapir.

His mom is definitely related to a dinosaur. I was standing by the fence and her head would just come up and up and up until she was looking me straight in the eye. Scary. Looking back, the pictures are kind of cute, but believe me it was SCARY at the time.

The sign on the booth said Try Something New Today so I had breakfast poutine. It had potatoes and cheese curds covered with onion gravy and eggs. Yum.

Kristine taught us about crossing the street at pedestrian crossings that don’t have traffic control. There are flags in bins by the zebra crossing and you carry one across the street while the cars wait. I think it is a great idea.

I voted to go up 5000 feet to Hurricane ridge. There was much talk about it being a winding road up, but I thought we needed to do all the Olympic park parts – rain forest, beach, and mountains. Kristine told Mike to stop looking around and to keep his hands on the wheel and to go around curves slowly. I suddenly realized Kristine and I ARE THE SAME PERSON! Those are exactly the things I tell Keith.

We saw two deer on the side of the road.

The view was wonderful. I took an million pictures that don’t do justice to it. I demonstrated my skill at finding soft, sink-y parts of snow to stick my foot through (up to my knee 🤦‍♀️) after the others just walked down without problems.

The snow was perfect for packing so I made a snowman. A small person named Connor was even more excited about it than I was. His mom told him through gritted teeth “not to knock that snowman down.” He was repositioning the arms to the top of the head when we drove away – and he had not knocked it down.

We went to walk on a spit – a long thin sandbar, but ended up somewhere else. We stood on a boat launch and watched the tide slowly come in. The water just keep creeping up the slight incline. I watched it from three feet ahead of me until my feet were in water. It absolutely fascinated me! What a cool opportunity!!

We took the ferry from Bainbridge Island to downtown Seattle. How much fun can you have in a day?! It was windy and sunny and beautiful. I took enough pictures of the skyline to make a flip book. Picture, look around, picture, look around, you get it.

We returned to the beautiful new home and enjoyed dinner on the deck under the heat lamps. This was a really fun day!!