I Love Traveling!

I also love being a teacher with the summer free for travel - if the finances were just there.

This time we flew from Albuquerque to Portland, spent a few days there, took a train to Seattle, spent a few days there including one day where we took a ferry to Victoria, B.C., and then back home.

Loved Portland especially the Rose Garden and Japanese Garden. We found it to be an easy city to get around in with great public transportation. It also has amazing restaurants. We celebrated our 29th anniversary with dinner at Serrato - they were nice enough to bring us champagne!

We went whale watching in Victoria. Last year I couldn't get enough of watching the humpbacks off the Alaskan coast; this year we watched orcas in the Juan de Fuca Strait. They are certainly faster than humpbacks, so I have no good pictures. However, we did get to see something that the naturalist said only happens a few times each summer. We were watching random dorsal fins over a large area when they started turning and going in the same direction. She came out and said the captain had gotten a radio message that said apparently the three pods that stay in the Strait were going to meet. She said they think it might be an especially large concentration of salmon. Anyway, we took off quickly and got to a place where we could see dorsal fins starting to converge. The naturalist said the orcas got excited when they met up, and we began to see whales breaching, doing spy hops, etc. It was amazing to watch.

I also got to mark WWKIP by meeting the Capitol Hill Knitters in the Olympic Sculpture Park in Seattle. They were so nice to a transient knitter! They made me feel so welcomed, included me in their raffle, and were just generally kind. I loved the looks on the faces of people passing by.

So, now that vacation is over, back to working on the house. We have to replace a faucet out in the yard, so I have holes to dig.