A Day Trip to Bellingham

 I needed my graddaughter Irene's signature on a document concerning the family Rockaway Beach Cabin. We decided it was a good excuse to road test our "new" Subaru.  

It rained , starting shortly after we got north of Seattle, all the time we were in Bellingham, and most of the way back home. We had fun anyway. 

We picked Irene up near her dorm in the Ridgeway complex. Western Washington University is build between to forested ridges and spreads up hill on either side. In fact I was impressed by all of the wonderful trees we saw as we drove around Fairhaven District and down to Bellinghan Bay. We checked out two of the parks she walks to down by the bay, but the rain prevented us from venturing out of the car. She took us to lunch in the historic Sycamore Square Building in Old Fairhaven. What a wonderful old building. The Black Cat is on the third floor, but there was a moderrn elevator so we did not climb the wonderful staircases.

These are internet photos. I was busy.

This is where we sat.

This is the first floor atrium

The food was good and we had a great opportunity to catch up with Irene. She is soon to finish her freshman year already and has a summer job lined up at a girl scout camp an Hood Canal. She is excited to get paid for going camping!

We took her to a grocery store to buy her a few supplies for when the food is "too gross" in the dining commons. 

We left her about 2:30. Her classes were done for the day and she said since it was raining she would probably go to bed. College life. 

On the way back south we sidetracked to the Skagit Valley towns of Bow and Edison. In Bow we found the Samish Bay Dairy and Cheese Maker we had stopped at before and bought a very special 10 year old Gouda and a slice of cheese cake.

In Edison we stopped at the Breadfarm to get bread to go with our cheese. At home later that evening we added some canned soup to our bread and cheese for a very fine supper. 

Tom did all of the driving and he was very happy with the Subaru. The larger side mirrors mostly made up for not having blind side detection. The cruise control, once he set it on the rainy freeway, was wonderful, so much improved from what we had before, slowing down and resuming speed automatically. I set the onboard GPS and it worked great while we listened to my iPhone music. 

We are happy with our "new" car, and it was a good day trip.