McChord AFB, Tacoma, WA

We're back here at McChord after spending several days on the Olympic peninsula. We drove to Port Angeles on Tuesday. We had planned on going up to Hurricane Ridge to go hiking, but it was rainy, so we opted out. We visited a couple of wineries and hung around the fifth wheel.

On Thursday we went to Victoria for the day. We took the Victoria Express - a walk-on ferry that departs from Port Angeles. We walked around town and rented a car. It was old, but cheap. Turns out it also didn't run too well. More on that later. Bob's sister, Lynn, was in town for the day on a coach tour from New York state. We picked her up about noon and went to a nice restuaraunt where we enjoyed sitting outside, visiting, and having lunch. We then dropped her back off at the tour bus and we headed to Butchart gardens where we were suppose to meet up with her. Except, that on the way to the gardens, the car had some problems. It was foaming brown stuff. Someone alerted us to the problem. So, we pulled into a gas station and called the rental car place. It took them about 1/2 hour and they came with another car. We headed to the gardens where we were to meet up with Lynn. We finally arrived at the gardens and had a lovely hour or so walking around with her. Even though it was a little rainy, the gardens were really beautiful. Then she hopped back on her bus for her trip back to Vancouver.

We drove back into the city, turned in the rental car, (and they took some money off the price), drove us to the ferry dock where we got back on the Express boat and returned to Port Angeles. All in all, a good, but slightly stressful day!!

Our square dance caller from Everett had let us know about a weekend dance festival in Sequim, so we decided to attend the Friday night dance. Saturday morning we drove back to McChord. We drove over the new Narrows bridge on our return trip.

We arrived back at McChord and Connie went to work baking both a fresh peach cake and chocolate chip cookies. We went to our friend's, Paul and Carol, for a visit. And visit and eat we did. First we had lunch - but more like dinner. Steak, salad, french bread, etc. Yum. Then we went for a walk over where the gravel pit used to be near Chambers Creek (in Tacoma). The county has put in a fancy golf course - a Scottish links type course. And they have put in some very nice walking paths. There are views of Puget Sound, McNeil Island, Fox Island, etc. It was sort of rainy, but not too bad. We then went back to Paul and Carol's home where we had soup and cornbread for dinner - followed by peach cake. We looked at their pictures from their recent trip to Austria and Switzerland. We were going to try to view out pictures, but we didn't have a cable for hooking up our computer to their TV and we also forgot our power cable. Oh - well, another time!