I’m going to do a mid-week update so everything doesn’t pile up and I forget something again. (On the last update, I forgot to include watching salmon swimming up stream which was pretty great.)
So, here is the public RV park we crashed at on Sunday evening in Oak Harbor on Whidbey Island. It was a beautiful cloudless morning on Monday and the first day since we got back to Washington that I didn’t have to wear a jacket.
The next night we stopped at a random RV park in Everett Washington. I wonder what the folks in the $500k rig next to us thought of my $6-scrap-wood leveling system.
On Tuesday we took the Boeing plant tour and saw where all the 747s (and a few others) are made.
I couldn’t take my camera or phone on the tour, but here’s a photo from the wikipedia article about it. They said it’s the biggest building in the world by volume:
Here’s a Google image of the goings-on inside. I thought it was fascinating. Boeing is awesome.
Microsoft headquarters in Redmond WA, however, was not awesome.
We wanted to see their visitors center (they have a bunch of old tech artifacts and showcases of their newest stuff) but it was closed due to some other event taking place there. Bummer, but oh well.
They did give me a brochure, however. It’s homemade from a color laser printer on standard paper, and then sloppily folded into thirds. I especially like the stretched logo. Nice effort, largest and richest software company on the planet.
They did have a store though. It’s like the Apple store, right? (Answer: No…no it is not.)
I’m glad we stopped, just to say we were there. It’s a nice campus.
We tried to fit a lot in yesterday since it was my mom’s last day with us. That night we had dinner out — a rarity for us.
Let me just say this about my mom and the last 10 days she spent with us on the road: I thoroughly enjoyed having her with us. It was great. Maybe even a little surprisingly so.
Let me explain: Going on vacations as a kid, I learned to brace myself for what would be a brutal sight-seeing schedule. Vacations were exhausting. My mom has mellowed a bit over the years, but I figured at least some of those old tendencies would surface while traveling with us, but they never did. My mom was as easy going as I’ve ever seen her, and we look forward to having her aboard the Arnold RV again soon.
We are back in Bellevue WA now staying at the same parking lot RV park we stayed at a couple weeks ago. No scenery here, but I LOVE the 4G connection and my girls are enjoying the pool.
It’s $42 a night though, so we’ll be moving right along in the morning…