Oh Washington

Ok... Can I first just say that it is so amazing out west!  I love the trees, the hills, the mountains, the snow covered mountaintops, the ocean, the animals, the fresh(er) air!  It's gorgeous, beautiful, wonderful... every beautiful word you can think of, it is. 

I went up there a week or two ago for work... which was one of the reason for my absence (other than my inability to get it together!).  For my full time job, I work on programs that are used at the Ports of Entry.  Very Exciting.  Not. Really.  But on this occasion, I was able to work in a fantastic area with fantastic people and get to experience SO MANY things! 

For work purposes we were located at Blaine, WA - right on the border.  Literally.  Most of the places we were working on were right there, but there were a few that needed drives... This was our view while driving back and forth and most of the time! 


Wherever we went, we had a mountain or ocean view.  It was crazy.  I didn't know that they had a volcano (saw my first - haha), Mount Baker which apparently occasionally steams.  That's the one thing that I did not get to see.  We had to drive 5 hours to a port and 5 hours back... on that trip we saw two little black bear cubs that were tumbling down a hill.  They ran across the road right in front of us. We thought we missed them, but while going through my pictures on the camera we got one of them!  Still on camera... see, still can't get act fully together.

We left on a Sunday and we worked long days for the first 3-4 days that we were there.  Then it chilled out.  A little.  Not that much.  We were able to go home one day early and we even ended up working a little that weekend, but one of our new work friends offered to take us out on their boat while we were there.  We couldn't have picked a better day because it was A-Maze-Balls! 


We had wanted to go on a whale watching trip, but everyone was saying that there were no fish this year therefore no whales... boo... So we went out anyways, and Captain Doug and Diana just looking to have a fun day on the water!  We set out, dropped our crab catchers, and then went to a spot to try to fish... no bites.  Then we had lunch at Roach Harbor which was gorgeous - I had a Salmon Wrap that was wonderful - then toured an open house on a 6 million dollar yatch!  Wow! That was cool... If I ever open my laptop again, I'll share more pictures! 


Then we were ready to head home so we hopped on the boat and drove by a little island that I can't remember the name of and saw some exotic animals that apparently were moved there by some billionaire and now I guess Bill Gates has a home on this island as well... but anyways saw some goat like animals and BALD EAGLES! 

Then we kept floating and we saw this...

Umm... it was kind of amazing!  Like really amazing!  Like kind of really amazing!  They are so gorgeous and beautiful and were so peaceful to just watch swimming through the ocean!  I could have watched them for hours!  It was unreal.. but it was real!  We got so lucky!  And we were so grateful! 

Then as we were {still} driving back because it was about 3 hours out, this little guy was just chillin' in the water as we passed...

When we picked up our crab catchers this is what we found! 

Captain Doug could only keep 10 because you can only keep 5 per licensed person on the boat and Stacey and I were not.  boo.  Sorry Captain Doug...we failed you.

The next day we secretly swept ourselves away to go to Seattle.  We had to visit Starbucks and the Space Needle since we were there so we made a quick trip down to Seattle

And then back home... well, to our home at the Holiday Inn Bellingham.

We had one more day of work to do and then we drove back to Seattle where we flew out of.  This was our view while driving...

And we ended our trip with a nice hotel dinner and some vino! 

 

I don't ever think you can go wrong with wine and crab cakes!  Mmmm...

And maybe if I really get my act together I'll have more pictures tomorrow!