Seattle, or close to it...

Dinner at the market

Two years ago I took an incredible trip to Seattle. It was a trip that combined three trips into one. I headed out with some girlfriends and ran a little race, then I had a couple of days to myself before Chris and some great friends came out to explore the city. Seattle has always been a place I've loved to visit and I'm lucky that this was my fourth time to the Emerald City. I thought I'd scoop the kids up and we would hit the streets jump on the monorail, explore some museums...and then we got there and life s.l.o.w.e.d. down.

Our campground was about 40 minutes East of Seattle in Fall City. It was a great campground complete with an isolated camping spot. Chris was traveling and I just felt the pull to sit for a bit. No excursions, no planning, just sitting and enjoying the space we were in. We would wake and do school, then the kids would venture into the woods to haul wood out and create different play environments before hooking up with some friends to go play mini golf or badminton. I put my chair in the sunshine and read. It was lovely. When Chris was home we went on a hike to Snoqualmie Falls and had dinner at some friend's house in Seattle while our children all played with one another. It felt good to live life not as a traveler, but just at home for a week.

Saturday was a day of excursions as we got up and hiked Twin Falls and made a stop at Top Pot Doughnuts. Chris and I dropped the kids off at a play place and had an afternoon of luxury getting massages before having dinner at Pike's Place Market and driving by the Space Needle.

"WOW! I never thought I'd get this close to the SPACE NEEDLE!" Austin announced from the backseat. "Are we going in??"

"No, we weren't planning on it buddy, it's been a long day."

Sadness.

Though I know he is a lucky kid that gets to see and experience a ton of stuff, I felt bad that he wasn't getting to go in the space needle that he was so excited about. This is why we travel, so they can pinpoint destinations and get excited about experiencing new things, and here we were next to a building that he has pictured since getting a model of one a year ago and he wasn't able to go experience it.

"Next time, buddy. Next time." And it feels good to say that, because I know there will be a next time.