What was I thinking?

“by suggesting a visit to Butchart Gardens?” said Captain as he followed ABN around,

hearing statements like “We should plant these,” “I must order some double begonias,” “We need a taller support for our sweet peas,” and “I am ready to go home and work on my garden.”

It is such a beautiful garden and oh so inspiring. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately) the climate in which we live is not conducive to growing beautiful roses

fuchsias

and begonias

without a lot of tending.

But we can grow Sweet Peas!

Sunken Garden created in an exhausted limestone quarry.

Lunch in the garden

Located in British Columbia, Canada, the gardens are about a 40 minute drive from pretty Victoria. With gorgeous plants on every corner, hanging from light posts

and flanking restaurants,

it is truly a city in bloom.

The Wanderer was parked just outside of Olympic National Park, so we did a little exploring.

Merrymere Falls Hike

Marymere Falls

As in most small towns, the folks in Port Angeles (PA to the locals) were extremely friendly. We had a great time hanging out with them celebrating the 4^th of July, listening to Fat Chance, a local band.

And of course watching fireworks.

Moving from the small town to the city; in Seattle we were greeted with traffic, horns honking, road rage (Captain has no idea what he did that wasn’t nice), homeless camps and crowds of tourist.

What to do in Seattle, we asked our Facebook friends. In the two days we had allotted, we could not do all that was suggested.

The Pike Street Market was probably nice but we couldn’t really tell because of the crowd.

Enjoyed a cold brew at the original Starbucks.

We are not sure, but suspect there is a city ordinance requiring a coffee bar/shop be located on every city block and a huge percent must be Starbucks. Or perhaps there is an ordinance that forbids folks to brew coffee at home.

In the historical downtown area known as Pioneer Square, ABN left Captain enjoying music in Occidental Square

while she browsed the shops and art galleries.

We had an excellent dinner (salmon and sable fish) at Ray’s Boathouse on the Puget Sound.

Captain explored the Boeing Factory

while ABN enjoyed a quiet afternoon in The Wanderer.

The best thing we learned (or reaffirmed) in Seattle is that we prefer the small towns where folks tend to be friendlier and less tense.

As we travel throughout our country, we marvel at the mountains, gorges, canyons, oceans, lakes and vistas. However, our best treasures are our people. Nothing gives us more pleasure than connecting with fun and interesting folks. That is exactly what we did on Friday evening at the Gorman Winery Tasting room in Woodinville just outside of Seattle. We spent a delightful evening sipping wine with a local couple, Bruce and Dona. We connected on Facebook to keep in touch with hopes our paths will cross again.

We are now off to do some visiting in the Tri-Cities of Washington.

 Note to email subscribers, hitting reply to the email notification of a new post will send your reply out somewhere in cyber space and we will never know of your comments.  If you wish to comment, please do so in the comment section on the blog site or send a note using the email address you have in your contact list.