Bellingham, family and the trip back to Iowa

Fields of tulips in Washington

Lane

The week we left Heceta was a busy one. We headed north to visit John’s brother and his family in Bellingham WA. The distance always made getting together difficult. We visited them in 1993 and then saw them along the way at weddings and funerals but not nearly enough. Mike and his wife Theresa have two daughters Mary Ann and Amy.  Amy , her husband Anthony and their son Lane live with Mike and Theresa. Lane was born with Down’s Syndrome; he is such a sweetie. He has been through a lot in his short lifetime, including open heart surgery at about 6 months of age. We enjoyed getting to know this special little boy.

Anthony,Lane, Amy, John (& Irma), Janie, and Mike

We only did a couple “touristy things” as most of the time was just being together with family. Mike did take us to the Spark Museum of Electrical Invention. John and Mike both being engineers were in nerd heaven. :) It goes through the discovery of electricity and the strides made in various areas, especially radios. It was fun to see all the old radios. They did have a few radios made by Art Collins which is the founder of the company that John worked for. They also have a couple hands on areas that would be great to take kids to. The nerds had a great time and I enjoyed it too.

John plays the Theramin

We also drove down to see the tulip and daffodils fields just south of Bellingham. Supposedly there is a tulip festival going on all month but Mike couldn’t figure out exactly where to go for that. We did find the fields and he pulled dover so I could take a couple photos. The fields are huge and beautiful.

MaryAnn, Janie, and John

The week went by too quickly and we are now on the long journey back to Iowa. The first day we drove about 7 hours to Post Falls ID. That is further than we like to go but I couldn’t fine a place to park before that that sounded good. In the fall we drove up to Deer Park but that is a ways off the interstate. We stayed at the Coeur d’Alene RV Park. It seemed pretty pricey to us but they do have an indoor pool if that appeals to you. Yesterday it was on to Missoula so a short 3+ hours and today about the same to Bozeman. We only have one more day with minimal mountain driving, just Bozeman pass or what the MDOT calls Bozeman Hill. The plan is to get to Sheridan WY tomorrow, Wall SD the next, then Madison SD for a couple days as we need to do some business in our “home” town. After that we will get to Storm Lake to visit our son Gabe and his wife Melissa. Finally it will be back to Cedar Rapids IA at the end of next week. All of the bad weather in South Dakota and Iowa has made us slow down and wait for them to clean up after the last storm. We have been blessed with great weather so far for driving and tomorrow is looking good too. We have managed to avoid snow all winter, the only snow we saw was next to the road in the mountains. The midwest may be the place that trips us up as I am not sure all their snow is done. We find it is interesting that this year we stayed further north and though we saw more rain than the previous 2 years it is the only year we haven’t experienced snow. I have my fingers crossed that we can keep that record in place.

Daffodil fields

Hope you are all keeping snow free, spring has to arrive sometime!!!!

Happy Trails