More Catching Up!

Okay...after I published that last post, I realized that it really wasn't very long at all. At least, not for me. :-) So I thought I'd go ahead and finish writing about my parents' trip.

On Saturday, Shawn and I had planned on taking my parents downtown. However, we had to make a stop first. We went shopping for our stove! We spent the morning doing that, and then we came home for lunch. The plan for the afternoon was to go to the Seattle Aquarium, followed by the Pike Market. However, the traffic getting into the city was insane! It literally took us over an hour and a half to get to the Aquarium. There were apparently a few issues going on. First of all, it was a gorgeous, sunny summer day in Seattle. Second, it was a Saturday. Third, it was HempFest. Yep...you read that right. HempFest. I never would have guessed that a festival dedicated to all things hemp (aka - marijuana) would've drawn such huge crowds, but it apparently does! The Aquarium itself was also pretty crowded, but we had a good time anyways. My parents really liked it, which was the whole point of going! Unfortunately, because of all the traffic and the crowds, we decided to skip the Pike Market. Instead, we just headed back up north towards home and went out to dinner at Boston's, one of our favorite restaurants.

On Sunday, we decided to head up to the San Juan Islands. Shawn and I have been up here a few times...we've explored San Juan Island (and Friday Harbor), we've gone kayaking near Anacortes, and we went whale watching here last year. The four of us left at 8:45 for the drive to Anacortes. We got there around 10:00 to get in line for the ferry that was scheduled to depart at 11:05. Getting out to Friday Harbor took us just over an hour, since this particular boat didn't stop at any other islands on the way out. Once on the island, we had lunch overlooking the water. Then we basically just drove around, looking at the scenery and stopping at a few historic sites. (This island was occupied by both American and British troops in the 1860s.) We got to the ferry terminal at 4:00, hoping to get on the 5:00 ferry. To his credit, the guy who was directing traffic didn't laugh at us too loudly. When we told him we wanted the 5:00 ferry, he quickly said that they've already "suspended parking" for the 6:55 boat! We should come back at 6:00 and see if we could get on that one. So we got some ice cream and Mom and I each bought a book at a used bookstore. As soon as they opened the parking for the 6:55 sailing, we got in line...and were #24 in the overflow line! They loaded the cars on the 6:55 ferry, and we didn't make it. The good news is that we were number 10 or so in line for the next sailing....at 10:00pm. So we all got dinner and found ways to kill time, and at 10:00, we were finally sailing towards the mainland. By the time we finally got back to Anacortes and then drove back home, it was almost 2:00am.

My poor parents were exhausted after this weekend! The original plan was to head back downtown on Monday and do a few more touristy things (Underground Tour, Space Needle, Pioneer Square, Pike Market). But my parents chose instead to just hang around the apartment and relax. So that's what we did on Monday! This morning we all (minus Shawn) were up at 4:30 Tuesday morning, and we left for the airport at 5:30. The nice thing about this...the traffic to the airport was actually pretty light. :-)

It was really nice to have my parents here! And hopefully the next time they come, they'll get to stay with us in our new house!