Travel

-Monday July 2nd-
We love Bed & Breakfasts when we travel and try to make them account for at least 40% of our overnight stays. A lot of times they work out to be about the same cost as a nice hotel room.

One of the downsides to B & B’s is that you never know what you are going to get. I imagine it is a little like internet dating, it is pretty easy to enhance your perceived positives and downplay or outright omit your weaknesses. That said, we have only been really disappointed twice, once in Arkansas and once in New Mexico.

A big positive for almost everyone, but is very often another downside for us, is the breakfast. At these types of lodgings, breakfast is usually served late, a lot of times it won’t start until 9:00AM. We are early risers so as to jam as much fun as we can into each day of vacation (we can rest at work.) Plus breakfast is typically something fancy and very rich, not our usual bagel, grits or cold cereal repast. We always wished we could find a B & B without the second B, that way we could eat what we wanted and when we wanted and now that we also have to tack on Donna’s new dietary restrictions, finding that sort of place would be awesome. Enter the Juniper Lane Guest House in Friday Harbor on San Juan Island.

On the internet it looks perfect, B & B style rooms, nice price, free WiFi, a casual common area, cool concept and with access to a full kitchen all day. The inn is far enough from the town, but not too far to be inconvenient for shopping or dining and the innkeeper is friendly, inviting and has a very laid back west-coast vibe. We managed to have both breakfasts and one lunch in the house’s kitchen.

The only negative about the Juniper Lane Guest House was because the summer weather on the island is such that it begs to have the windows in the room flung wide open, meaning you hear any traffic that passes by right out front on one of the island’s main north-south routes. And as it turns out, there is quite a bit of traffic on that road until late at night.

Move this building about 50 yards further off the road and it would probably be in the top 5 places we have ever stayed at.

-Monday July 2nd Morning-
Today was a travel day. Brother Scott and family were headed back to Snohomish while Donna and I were headed to the San Juan Islands.

We drove the 141 kilometers from Colquitlam, BC to Anacortes, WA and got in line for the 2 o’clock ferry to Friday Harbor. We were towards the end of lane 6 and we waited while they were loaded lanes 1, 2 & 3 (4 and 5 were empty.) Watching all those cars drive on we were kind of worried we wouldn’t get on board and have to wait until 4:45 for the next ferry. Donna got out of the car to go ask the ticket seller lady if we would get on the current ferry. She asked Donna if we got a ticket of a number, “A ticket,” replied Donna. “You’re getting on this ferry,” came the reply. See, fortunately for us, the M/V Yakima holds up to 114 cars.

Because we had a late start (about 10:00AM, which seems to be the typical Northwest start time, both American and Canadian) we planned on eating on the ferry. Definitely not haute cuisine, but it would have to do. I opted for a sausage dog and Donna was in a quandary as what to get until she spotted soup pots on the other side of the serving line. She noticed they had one of her favorites, split pea soup, and asked me to pass her a small paper bowl that was located on my side of the line. I lobbed one to her, but it bounced right off her hand and landed smack inside the middle of the clam chowder tureen. Ooops.

Donna snatched the bowl out quickly, but the cashier sprang into action, she commanded the woman next to Donna to close the lid on the Clam Chowder and shouted to the kitchen, “We need another Clam Chowder on the line!” all the while giving Donna and I a withering look. Fortunately she only charged us for the single cup of soup and not a whole pot of the stuff.

-Sunday July 1st Afternoon-
After our walk to the parks with kids and visiting the local Colqitlam Canada Day festival, we headed into downtown Vancouver to see that city’s parade. A dozen of us took the train, I don’t know what the total was, but it couldn’t have been too bad as an adult fare was less than $2.50 one way. The thing that was very intriguing was there were no turnstiles* and no conductors. I asked our host, “Why’d we buy tickets?” Her reply was, “Just in case a random Traffic Mountie asked for them.” Another fine example of the Canadian’s inherent politeness.

*They are working on installing turnstiles and they should be in place sometime next year.

First stop was to pose in front of the Olympic Flame from the 2010 Winter Games. As you can sort of tell, this is ground zero for the festivities even though the parade route is a couple of blocks over.

We made it over to a corner that was lightly populated near the end of the parade route that had some nice steps for viewing over the folks that would be lining the curb. We hadn’t planned our timing very well as we neglected to get dinner before heading downtown, so our choices were limited, but as it turned out their was a famous Canadian hamburger chain restaurant just a couple blocks away. We left the bulk of the group behind to keep claim on our spot and four of us headed to McDonalds.

We were not the only ones who were grabbing a bite to eat before the parade as the line was nearly to the door. I didn’t think we’d get anything to eat in time to see the parade, but apparently this wasn’t their first attempt at handling a huge crowd in a hurry as we made it out the door in about ten minutes. There was another line inside that was a little shorter, but a lot slower, the line to use the Ladies Room.

We got back to our corner with time enough to finish most of fast food before the parade, but it was no longer sparsely populated. It was jammed with seemingly more people than live in our fair city of Aiken. The parade included everything from a Scottish Pipe Band to a Chinese Dragon to Imperial Stormtroopers and after watching nearly the whole thing (or as much as we could handle), we headed for the train for the ride back to Colquitlam.

By the time we got back to the house, no one really wanted to head back to the park we were at earlier in the day to see the fireworks, so we sat on the back deck drinking wine and telling tales. Turned out it was a good thing that we didn’t go, as they cancelled the show because some knuckleheads jumped the fence surrounding the fireworks.

-Saturday June 30th Morning-
Last year ASCO offered a deal with National Car Rental, you could join their Emerald Club at no cost and get up to a 20% discount, so I opted in thinking I’d never use it, but it might be worth checking out the next time we rented a car.

As luck would have it, for this trip to Seattle, they we a little less than the price of the second tier agency we usually use, so we stepped up a bit on rental car company ladder.

When the taxi* dropped us off at the rental car place we were surprised that there was not a soul around to help us, just an empty computer terminal and a sea of cars.

*Our plane got into Seattle at midnight Friday, so we took a shuttle to our hotel to get a 1/2 nights sleep. When we got up Saturday morning rather than take the hotel shuttle back to the airport and then get a rental car shuttle from the airport to the off-site rental place we took a taxi to make it one shorter ride instead of two longer ones. I’ve got aninteresting taxi ride story for another day.

Thinking there must be some kind of mistake we go up one flight on the escalator to the rental counters. The nice lady put down her crossword, looked at my paperwork, said that all I needed to do was go back down and pick any car from the intermediate aisle.

There were a bunch of Chevy Impalas sitting about, but then I spotted a familiar profile. It was a 2012 GLS (AKA base model), only a year newer that the Purple Whale, so at least all the controls would be right where I was used to them being. It had only 4,000 miles more on the odometer, so all the interior panel rattles were right where we were used to them being too.