Northern Trek: Day Five (and Six too..)

Quick side note: I forgot to mention that on the day of the parade, this group from the local animal shelter came marching by. They were walking cute little doggies and tossing candy and a few people were carrying these HUGE stuffed dogs.  Well, one of them came over, plopped this ginormous dog on Bundle's lap and said, "There ya go, honey!"  My kids were screaming they were so excited.  And...I was screaming because I had no idea how we were going to fit Behemoth here into our car or into our house.  But it made for a very happy little girl.

Monday - What a fun day!!!!  The beaches around Bainbridge are great but pretty darn rocky and kinda stinky - lots of ...shall I say....signs of the life and death of the sea creatures there?  Digging up clams, finding washed up crab shells everywhere, that kind of stuff.  Which is great.  But on Monday Whitley led us to a beach to the north called Point No Point.  There's an old lighthouse there and some actual sand.  You can see Rainier off in the distance with a teeny-tiny Seattle nestled at its feet.  The sun was deliciously warm and the water was breathtakingly cold.  We ate some lunch on the way up, brought plenty of snacks and waters and spent about three hours sitting in the sand and watching the kids play.

This fort was already there but our four girls spent most of their time gathering seaweed and other treasures to decorate it.

This one was alive!

The two littles spent about a hour making an "ocean bathtub"

Yum.  

Can you see little itty bitty Seattle down there?

In the evening after we went home and got cleaned up, we met Adam at a harbor-side restaurant called Doc's.  We enjoyed a nice meal and the beautiful view.  After dinner, what else could we do to celebrate our last night on the island except walk to Mora's for more ice-cream?

I SO love this photo

Home Again, Home Again, Jiggty Jig:

I decided our last day on the road was not worthy of a whole entry by itself, but I love that we went from this:

To this:

...in one little day.  We were such rock stars!  We were on the 4:40 ferry off of Bainbridge which was no mean feat.  Kids even went back to sleep (I may have too...) after we passed Snoqualmi Pass and woke up in the middle of Washington someplace.  You know, on google maps, the drive just doesn't look that bad - just one little squiggly blue line but gracious that is a long drive!  Our kids were wonderful.  If you look carefully behind Stomper you can catch a glimpse of Behemoth the super stuffy.  We shoved her in the car and even had room left over for a few kids. 

What a wonderful wonderful trip.  So glad we went, so hopeful to go again soon!  (Just maybe not in January.  Or with my mom.... ha ha?)