June Trip Highlights in Pictures - Part 2

All of a sudden, it's July.  So I better get motivated to continue posting some pics from our June trip out to Seattle and back, before they are completely outdated!

The kids and Melissa and I all agreed that one of the best days of the entire trip was one which involved no more travel than the short, steep walk from Uncle Ryan's house down to the water.  Aunt Suzan brought her 6th grade class on a fieldtrip to her own home that day and we all went down to see what one of the lowest tides of the year revealed.  Here, Dats (age 11) holds a sunstar - a slimy relative of the starfish.

We had been down to the same beach a few days earlier and had enjoyed watching all the tiny crabs run from rock to rock - but we had no idea how much more LIFE there was to explore: flounder, clams, sand dollars, anemones, and huge starfish like these.

This is a moon snail - the part I am gripping is the shell, all the rest is slimy slug matter.

This picture comes close to capturing the intense color of this starfish...

The kids took to displaying various starfish on a boulder in the center of the beach.  Don't worry - high tide completely reclaims this rock.

Some of the crabs and clams we took back to the house for Uncle Ryan to cook up for lunch.

Uncle Ryan prepares to steam the crabs.

...Which fascinated the boys.

The next day we took Grandma to the airport to send her back to Indiana and Uncle Ryan then played tour guide for us again.  We stopped at XXX Rootbeer for lunch - amazingly, a place Ryan had never eaten before.  The sign on the door was no lie.

The restaurant apparently hired an interior decorator on steroids...

You know how some people post food pictures on Facebook all the time?  It strikes me as a little odd, but then again, good food is one of the great joys of life - and it's so doggone transitory.  So why not celebrate it a bit?  Dats decided his burger was worthy of a picture, so I obliged.

They also had a BIG gumball machine out front.  When I went to take a picture of it, an employee ran out from behind the counter with these sunglasses and offered to take a group shot for me.

After lunch, the weather turned all Seattle-ly but Uncle Ryan still wanted to show us Snoqualmie Falls.  Apparently, there was a water fall down there under all the fog.  Supposedly.

Every once in a while the fog would clear enough to see at least the top of the falls...

It's rough being chauffeured around Washington state...

On our last evening in Washington, Uncle Ryan had arranged for us to share about Haiti at the prayer service held each Wednesday at his church, Faith Presbyterian.



Here's the inside of the sanctuary before about 70 people arrived for the mid-week time of prayer.  Since we started raising support for the upcoming ministry in Haiti, we have now had the great privilege of visiting several churches we might not have experienced otherwise.  This is a devoted and generous congregation and I understand now why Ryan and Suzan speak so highly of their church!