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29 June 2007 - Bellingham-Seattle-Portland


The ferry docked at 0800 Seattle time, but since the ferry flies the Alaskan flag, it keeps Alaskan time. Alaskans are like that. Eight stars of gold and whatnot.

So it was really only 0700 Alaska Time, which meant that we got up at about 0600 – by far the earliest we’ve needed to be moving in a while. We made oatmeal in the room by heating water in the coffeepot, packed up our last minute stuff and headed to the barrier across the steps to the car deck.

But wait! Steve started to do something totally unexpected…he shaved! Yes, he shaved! Last time he shaved was June 12 for the Change of Command. Since then, I bet Troy has been shaving every day. Steve notsomuch. Now, I knew that Steve was going to stop into the Coast Guard station in Bellingham for a few hours to use their computers to finish up some work. I even commented the day before that I knew he would shave before walking into a CG building – in uniform or not, on leave or not - I just knew that LCDR Scruffy wouldn’t walk into that building. He said he didn’t really care when I asked him the day before. Well, as we were heading out the door he took one last glance at the mirror next to the door, stopped dead in his tracks and said…”IIIIIII can’t do it!” Poof! The beard was gone. I didn’t even get a chance to take a picture!

Funny thing on the way to the car deck, we ran into a woman who was totally lost. She had no idea how to get to the car deck. Now that isn’t all that unusual. If you don’t have a pet to take care of, you can go the whole trip without setting foot on the car deck. This lady was really freaking out that she couldn’t find the car deck. You know what was odd? SHE HAS A DOG! We saw her down there 3-4 times a day for the last 3 days. Weird.

So the ferry docked, and we made the made dash/obstacle course run to the car. As I mentioned before, they want us in our car IMMEDIATELY after docking so we can pull away. Problem is, they won’t let us into the car deck until the ship is docked. So the barrier drops and 40 or so car loads of people have to dash to their cars. It was crazy. And we didn’t even get to wake up Tinkerbell. (OK, you have to be a Disney World geek to get that one).

Here we are…Outside. That is how Alaskans refer to the lower-48 states. Hawaii, we just call Spring Break. Just about everyone goes to Hawaii in March. It keeps us from killing ourselves and/or each other.

I’ve probably spent more time in Bellingham, WA than any other place that I have not actually lived. Except maybe Disney World – I’d have to do the math on that one. When we were first married, Steve’s ship was in dry dock for 2-3 months. Since they couldn’t live on the ship, he had a hotel room, so I stayed with him in Bellingham for about a month. Ahh, young love. We’ve also spent a few days here during the comings and goings of each of our Alaska moves. We once camped about 50 feet from a train track in Bellingham. Of course, we couldn’t see the track and didn’t know it was there until about an hour after we went to bed (umm, sleeping bag). For a brief moment, we thought we were ON the tracks. So every hour a train came by, blowing its horn and shaking the ground. Not fun. This was during our first move together (Kodiak-San Diego). This was also the move when we spent a night in the car. At the Del Mar Polo Grounds. We decided if we were going to have to sleep in the car, we would do it in style. Anyway, after 14 years, we are getting better at this moving stuff. We’ve had practice.

So here we are in Bellingham. We found a giant gravel parking lot and let Malley run around for about 45 minutes. Then Steve headed to the CG station to do his work and the boys and I headed to Target. YAY! TARGET! I love Target. We don’t have them in Alaska yet (Coming Soon, Fall 2007). We popped in to Target in Orlando on the way to our last Disney Cruise in March 2006, that was the last time I was actually in a Target.

I had a shopping list, but I was also excited to just roam around. Now anyone who really knows me knows that I hate to shop. Something got mixed up in my chromosomes. Love football – hate shopping. I can’t explain it. Anyway, Yay Target!

So the boys and I shopped. New shorts for them. Drew only had 3 pairs of shorts, which is OK for an Alaskan kid. It is even OK for a week vacation in Hawaii since we had a washer and dryer in the condo. It is NOT OK for a cross country trip in June. I also bought Nate a few pairs, because for some reason all the shorts he owns are khaki. I ‘m not sure how that happened, but I thought I would bring some color into the boy’s life.

Yes, Dad, Kevin & Keith, I bought Fishy Crackers and M&M’s. In our family it is not a road trip without Fishy Crackers and M&M’s. That’s what Mom always packed.

The boys were actually good during this adventure, so I bought them a Squishie - OK a slushy, but anyone who has ever watched The Simpson’s can’t help but refer to it as a Squishie.

Then came the fun part – getting all of my Target purchases into our already jam packed car. I stood in the parking lot and took everything out of boxes and wrappers, then shoved it into a semi-logical bag. We’ll sort it out later.

I still had about an hour to kill before meeting Steve, so we went to a sporting goods store to look at bike racks since ours was currently held together with duct tape and pixie dust.

WOW! I love Outside prices! I found a trailer hitch-mounted 4–bike rack for $139. When we looked in Alaska, the cheapest we could find was $400. SOLD! It’s a bit more than we need for this trip, but now we can take all four bikes camping and such. You know, when we actually have a home and going on a trip is a novelty.

I sprung for the $15 installation fee, so the boys road their bikes around a quiet area of the parking lot for about 45 minutes while the rack was installed.



By now LCDR Baby-Face was done working so we picked him up and headed to our favorite Bellingham eatery for lunch. We ate at the Colophon Café, home of the Mug o’Mocha Moo. It is a cute little place attached to the Village Bookstore, a great (and big) independent book store. The café has a really interesting menu with lots of soups, salads, sandwiches, 3 quiches daily and 2 pot pies daily. Steve has never been one to pass up a Chicken Pot Pie, the boys each had bagels with peanut butter and I had African peanut soup with a baguette and cheese. Definitely our best meal so far. We love this place and go at least once every time we are in Bellingham.

So now it is about 1:30 and we realize we’ve made a big mistake. We are heading to Portland tonight and we are going to hit Seattle at about 3 pm, on a Friday. We figured the traffic wouldn’t be too bad until about 4, so maybe we could make it to the city before it got crazy. We were wrong….

Three o’clock, about 30 miles north of Seattle, the world came to a screeching halt. Welcome to our first traffic jam in years! Ugh! So we crept along at about 10 mph for the next three hours… Can we go home now? Oh yeah, and it was hot. When I mentioned that it was hot, Steve looked at the temperature gage on the dash and informed me that it was a whopping 76 degrees. Knowing what we are in for in our new town both weather and traffic-wise, I quickly began calculating a budget to see how we would fare if we turned around, Steve joined the Alaska State Trooper, and I got my old job back. Unfortunately, it didn’t look good. So, we kept heading south.

Once we were finally through the city, we all needed to run around a scream for a few minutes, so we pulled off at an exit with a sign for a park. We all got out, ran the dog around for a bit and discovered a new game: Puppy Catch! Malley is about 7 months old and an extremely smart dog (which can be good and bad!) She is learning a lot, but is still 7 months old! We would like to some day have her under voice control so she can hang out without a leash, but we aren’t there yet. We decided to give it a try in a very controlled way. Steve and I stood about 20 yards apart, I called the dog, and Steve let go of the leash. She came right to me! So I turned her around, Steve called her and I let go. This is fun for all! Nate was watching this all unfold and pointed out that it looked like we were playing catch with the dog & Puppy Catch was born!

By now it is getting late. It doesn’t look like we are going to get to Portland anytime soon. We were going to see our friends Chris & Beth tonight, but we had to call and bail out on them. We felt bad, but it was getting late and we were all grumpy. We wouldn’t have been very good company even though they are our good friends, and they have wine.

We arrived at the Super 8 near the Portland airport at about 9:30 & we were starving! So we checked Malley into the hotel and headed out for food. Now for our first real dining challenge: lots of fast-food and sit-down national chain options…but no. We headed down the street away from the highway and found a sports bar/restaurant called Sidelines. Ick, apparently people can still smoke in restaurants in Oregon. Oh well. We had potato skins and a big pizza. Healthy, I know. We didn’t even pretend to have a vegetable. Like I said, it was late and we were grumpy. Steve and I each had an Alaskan Amber while we could still get it.

We headed to the motel and crashed.

Can we go home yet??