I'M BACK

We were gone eight days.

We were aloft and flew a good part of the way around the globe.

We used the sky train in Vancouver. Public transit buses. Tour buses. We went up Grouse Mountain on a bus. Walked across the rope bridge at Capilano Canyon. Travelled further up to the cable car that takes people almost to the top.

Theresa and Heather went on up to the top in a chair lift. Didn't enjoy that. Came back down to the cable car on foot.... more or less. One wore heels, the other birkenstocks.

A ferry carried us to Victoria on Vancouver Island. We trekked around town on foot and scooter. The Seattle Clipper fast-tracked us down Puget Sound to Seattle.

If I had known Seattle, like San Francisco clings to the side of mountains. I may not have gone. But it is. I did. I am here to tell the tale.

In Seattle, I zig-zagged through the downtown , up, up, way up, from Harbor to Hilton Hotel. I remembered from bicycling days, it's easier to zig-zag on an incline than to take it head on. It works the same on a scooter. It increases distance but reduces incline.

At the Hilton Hotel, only half way to the top, but a long way from the bottom, we collected the vehicle we used in the rest of our travels.

It had Hawaiian license plates. We added the Island of Paradise to our itinerary.

We drove to Tacoma,where resides grand-daughter Vanessa, husband James and twins Clair and Reid in a house that also clings of the side of a mountain along with most of the rest of the town.

Their house is on the same street where the first house in the town was built in 1869. Tacoma is a town of 250,000 people, mostly clinging to the side of a mountain.

On Saturday, we went to Pikes Market at the waterfront in Seattle.

Well!! Bless our Hearts!!! If that's a market, we have no such thing in Aurora.

On Sunday, we went to a several day event called Tastes of Tacoma. Held annually in a State Park. It resembles our one day Street Sale in Aurora except it was many times larger with many more vendors and much more variety. We got there early. When we left , crowds were beginning to swell.

Portable toilets in rows of twenty were handily placed in various locations.

We spent the next two and a half hours climbing Mount Rainier where snow was sufficient for people to snow board down the slope.

We drove back down faster, by a smidgen.

Apparently, the snow never completely melts that high up the mountain. Snow boarding is summer recreation in the Green State of Washington. To be sure, snow melt gushes from the rocks and disappears under the road we were driving, to spill out in waterfalls and form white water rivers at the bottom of steep ravines, the edges of which were uncomfortably close to the paved section of the two lane road.

Signs requested visitors to refrain from the temptation to feed the wild life; creatures like bears and deer and foxes. We saw a black and silver fox with a smaller creature held securely between his jaws. Didn't look like he needed much help from humans around.

I personally experienced no temptation whatsoever to feed the wild-life.

On Tuesday and Wednesday, we visited three malls. The first was spectacular. There were turrets in the roof with sunshine and fresh air streaming through. The food court had an outside patio where people were enjoying lunch.

The stores were beautiful and sales were galore.

We shopped.

On Wednesday we returned. our numbers doubled. There were two more suitcases, two strollers, two car seats, Vanessa and two tiny toddlers to spend a month with their Canadian grandparents, my son Stephen and Mary.

We delivered a gift in Tacoma for Mary. Folded between a dress for Vanessa and a T-shirt for James was a full size picture of herself , plasticised, to attach to the frig at baby height, so no time would be wasted getting to know Grannie again.

We delivered them safely at Toronto Airport. They would spend the night in Kitchener. Everything was packed for a six o'clock start in the morning for the continuation of their journey to the cottage on Georgian Bay.

The whole family will gather there on July 10th.