May 21

We left the Naval Support Center in Marysville on Wednesday and headed back to LaConner so I could see the Quilt Museum. The museum is located in a beauiful Victorian building. I was overwhelmed by the quilting. I am such an amatur. As it was still fairly early in the day we decided to drive the last part of the Cascade loop. That took us to Mt. Vernon, Burlington and Sedro-Wooley. We weren'y impresed with any of those towns. LaConner spoiled us I guess. We weren't able to find a suitabke place to stop for the night and as the weather was rainy (Again) we decided to check into the Larrabee State park a day early. We had planned to stay there Thursday night anyway. What a lovely park. These pictures are from our stay there. We hiked down to the beach and then up to an overlook several times in between rain drops. This gave us an opportunity to clean the camper, etc. in preparation for the ferry. We met several other campers who were also staging for the ferry there so we will know a couple of people on the ferry. My freezer is empty so that 1. we will have to turn the propane off for the 37 hour trip and 2. When ( I said when not if) Garry gets a BIG fish I will have room in the freezer.   

We are now in Bellingham.This is a very nice small city. We are sitting in a coffee bar writing this email. We have noticed coffee houses/bars are on almost every corner in Washington and they are NOT all Starbuck's. We have to arrive at the ferry dock around 1PM for the 6PM departure. We will have a cabin for this first leg of the trip. We have been told that a lot  of people will put up tents on the solarium deck or sleep in thhe lounge chairs but our bones are a little old for that. We will be out of email/cell range until Sunday May 23. Happy Birthday Michael! We also will have to turn the clocks back again so we will be 4 hours behind Maryland.
We are both really psyched for this next leg of the trip. I hope we see lots of whales, etc. while going through the islands. We will update again when able.