Wine tasting with the best-friends-in-law

We met Chris and Megan at Mark and Amy's wedding - Amy is Marc's sister, and Mark is her husband. Mark went to high school with Chris. Chris and Megan are traveling physical therapists, and they have been in Olympia, WA since earlier this year - we ran into them at a roadside lookout in the Olympic Mountains (see previous post). Anyway, we invited Chris and Megan to come see us in Seattle before they left for their next work assignment in Wisconsin. We drove over to Woodinville to visit a number of wineries to taste wine - including, Januik, Silver Lake, Columbia Valley, and Chateau Ste Michelle. I had never been wine tasting before, so it was fun to try the different varieties. We came home with some purchased wine and spent the evening sipping wine, eating a great pork loin, and listening to records for the rest of the night. It was great to see Chris and Megan again - hopefully we can visit them next summer when they go to Alaska! [Mike]

Summer rainbow

Last Saturday Marc and I took a long bike ride to attend two parties. His work hosted a party on Bainbridge Island, so we biked from our house to Downtown, then took the ferry to the island. From there, we biked to and from the party. Once we returned Downtown, we then headed south to another party. A light rain/mist began as the sun was setting, creating a magnificent double rainbow. We captured a couple of shots, but it doesn't quite do it justice... it was pretty intense in color!

Steely Dan in the rain

Steely Dan in the rain... Well, when I was at Children's Hospital, Sally, Loree, and Laura invited us to go to the Steely Dan concert at Chateau Ste. Michelle, this great local winery. Now, it only rained 2 days over the last 40 or so, and of course, it happened to be on the day of an outdoor concert. Oh well! It was a great concert - the musicians were great, and Donald Fagen sounded exactly the same as he does in recording. Unfortunately, they did not play "Rikki don't lose that number" or "Reelin' in the years," but they did play a slow version of "Do it again." It was great to get out and see live music in the company of friends, good wine, and great food!

Beach Weekend

This weekend we headed down to Long Beach ... Washington, not California. It's about three hours south of Seattle by car, and basically comprises a bunch of beach resorts located on a peninsula between the Pacific Ocean and Willapa Bay (picture above). Unfortunately, there really isn't any swimming allowed because of the cold water and rip tides. But it's a great place to relax and even fly a kite if you like.

We stayed at a little place called the Shakti Cove.



The dogs had a great time at the beach.





We also tried out the forest loop trail at Leadbetter Point State Park, at the very tip of the peninsula.





I think we all agreed (including the dogs) that next time we we'd like to stay a bit longer! [Marc]