Seattle
Day 1:
We left for Seattle the day after Ailey left for Orlando. She made it to Orlando safe and sound. She had a layover in Salt Lake and made us laugh with our high school's version of "Tell me you are from WA without telling me you are from WA?" All the high school kids were lined up to eat Beecher's mac and cheese in the SLC airport at 8am. LOL.
We decided on Seattle for our spring break because Bryn informed us that there were a lot of things there that she hadn't seen. What?! Not possible...but it was. I call this the baby of the family syndrome. We've done so many things with the older kids and just assume that Bryn has done them too. This has happened with zoos, aquariums, amusement parks, the circus, and apparently the touristy sites of Seattle. We decided to rectify that situation and be Seattle tourists once more.
On the drive there we weren't anticipating that Snoqualmie Pass would look like a winter wonderland in April but it sure did. It felt more like Christmas Break than Spring Break. Although once we came into North Bend we hit rain, as we always do, and then it was sunshine in Seattle. Woohoo!
We stayed at the Hyatt Regency on Lake Washington and we absolutely loved it! Our room had a gorgeous lake view and you could even see downtown Seattle in the distance. It was fabulous. We will definitely stay there again.
We had an early check-in so we got settled and then grabbed some lunch at Torero's a nearby Mexican restaurant. It was delicious! They make their own tortillas and they were amazing!
It was so pretty! The views in every direction were gorgeous!
After the observation deck, we went down a level to the part of the Space Needle that rotates, and we had fun taking pictures on the moving glass floor. There were people terrified to even step on it. One person was having a near panic attack and then there were other people lying down on it. LOL. The glass floor didn't bother us at all. It was really cool. Ailey would not have stepped a single toe on that glass floor.
After that we shopped at the gift shop, walked around the Seattle Center (which is much nicer than when we came with the older kids), and then headed over to the Armory for some food. They have a great food court. As you know...the Johnsons LOVE a good food court!!
First stop...our very favorite candy store. Seattle Fudge. They have my beloved penuchi. We got a *good-sized* amount, brought it back to our hotel, and ate it for days. It was divine!
We also got boba and some meat pies for dinner. People always ask what we order at boba tea shops. We just get coconut milk with the flavorings added (no actual tea) and then we like ours blended with ice and then the boba balls added. It was delicious and geared us up for more exploring. We wandered around downtown. Tyler and I both thought that the downtown looked better and felt safer than it did even a few years ago. Things were getting dicey then. We were happy about that because Seattle has been a nightmare for the last two years. But it was sad to see that a lot of businesses have left the downtown. So many great restaurants are gone too. Hopefully things will continue to improve.
When we got back to our hotel that evening, we put on our running shoes, and hit the beautiful lakeside trail while the sun was going down. We did a quick two miles and got back to our hotel when it was dark. Live music was playing, people were milling around, and the lights on the water were gorgeous. Bryn wanted to swim so we hit the pool and the hot tub for a late night swim. This hotel has a lovely pool. Day one was fantastic and it was so fun to see Seattle through Bryn's eyes.
Meanwhile in Orlando....Ailey performed at Disney World in the morning and then enjoyed the park until late that night.
Day 2:
The next morning we all slept in. Tyler and Bryn grabbed breakfast from the café downstairs at the hotel. It was delicious and the café is open 24 hours which is really nice. They had great breakfast burritos and ham and cheese croissants. We headed back downtown and to Pike's Place Market.
The crowds weren't too bad. Weekdays are definitely the time to go. Bryn wanted to shop, eat, and see all of the sights, and we were happy to comply. First up was Ellenos Greek Yogurt. There is a specialty grocery store in Spokane that sells Ellenos like you would buy it at an ice cream shop but they usually only have four flavors that rotate. Our very favorite flavor (so far) is the passionfruit. We were excited to try some new flavors at the flagship Ellenos.
Tyler got marionberry. I got half mango and half orange turmeric. Bryn got half passionfruit and half raspberry. All were delicious and we ate as we walked around. Passionfruit still reigns supreme as the best flavor!
Some of our favorite places and things:
Bryn watched the flying fish.
Marnin Saylor was one of her favorite stores! It is so pretty and adorable.
All of the fresh flowers were spectacular!
They had tons of cherry blossoms this time. The cherry blossoms were blooming all over the city and it was so beautiful! (Especially since nothing was blooming back home in Spokane.)
The weather was perfection. Sunny and not too hot or too cold.
Tyler got the rhubarb; I got the marzipan, and Bryn got the chocolate hazelnut. They were piping hot and stuffed full of filling. I've never had so much marzipan in a pastry. It was divine! We got there at the perfect time too. After we were done ordering there was a huge line out the door and down the street. We watched them make pirosky too. So cool!
Bryn wanted to see the infamous gum wall which has now grown to a gross gum alley. It is disgusting. People everywhere were chewing gum and sticking it to the wall. We declined to add a contribution.
Look how gross and it stretches out in both directions. But when in Rome.
We walked all over the place and went into a ton of shops. There were painted walls everywhere. They were perfect for taking pictures. This was our favorite.
Then, of course, we had to go to the original Beecher's because we ARE from WA and we, too, need that delicious mac and cheese...although not at 8am!
That mac and cheese can't be beat and those cheese curds are the best! We've tried them all and even eaten cheese curds all through Wisconsin (cheese curd capital) and Beechers reigns supreme!!
Then we walked down to the waterfront. It was such an incredibly beautiful day!! We couldn't get over the weather!!
Our friends told us that we needed to do the Wings over Washington ride. We had never done it before. They were so right! It was so fun and we absolutely loved it!
It's a flying theater. It is part ride, part IMAX, and part virtual reality. We all agreed that this was our very favorite activity of spring break!
After that we headed back to the Seattle Center to go to the Museum of Pop Culture. Now there's a place that I could have stayed at for hours and Tyler too. Bryn not so much but she learned more about Pearl Jam and Nirvana than she ever wanted to know. LOL. There were other fun exhibits to see too. We got there late in the day so had to rush through and missed seeing some exhibits that we would have liked to see. Shoot.
We grabbed dinner at a Thai restaurant that night and it was fantastic! We also got more boba drinks for our dessert. There are so many food choices. It was phenomenal! We walked our legs off and got back to our hotel late and were absolutely exhausted but what a great day!!
Meanwhile in Florida...Ailey spent the day at Epcot.
Day 3:
The next day we slept in again (a delightful perk of traveling with an older kid), watched the Sunday morning session of General Conference while we ate breakfast and got ready. It was another beautiful sunny Seattle day! How did we got so lucky? We headed back downtown to take a ferry over to Bainbridge Island. Our destination was Poulsebo, WA aka "Little Norway." The ferry is always fun and always blustery!!
My Norwegian man LOVES this town and his little Norwegian daughter did too!
It's so picturesque!
Our first stop was the famous Sluy's Bakery. There was a huge line out the door when we got there but luckily it moved pretty quickly.
We love their Viking cups and pastries. Bryn got a giant maple bar man! But we were really there for this:
This lefse is not as good as Tyler's but it is still REALLY good!
Then we had to walk off all of those pastries! We did quite a bit of shopping. There are some fun shops there that we love. Bryn found quite a few cute things for her room. I found a cute new Easter decoration. Tyler was all about going to the black licorice store! It is a place called Marina Market. It has hundreds of kinds of black licorice. Tyler LOVES black licorice but can't eat very much since it can mess with his heart so he was REALLY looking forward to getting some good licorice since it has been such a long time since he has had some. He perused that store for an hour. Bryn and I hate black licorice so we moved onto the marzipan section and the cheese section where we got our treats. This store is filled to the brim with imported European delights. Bryn and Tyler also paid a visit to the Mora ice cream shop. LOL.
We spent most of the day in Poulsbo and had a fantastic time!!
Our next destination after Poulsbo was a beach outside of Port Townsend. It was a bit of a drive so we made sure to have some snacks on board! LOL.
Gotta have that LEFSE!
And some amazing aged gouda! Preferably gouda wrapped in lefse. Now there's a heavenly snack!
We drove through Port Townsend which is quite the place! It is famous for having more than 300 Victorian homes. The whole town was so beautiful and historic. We heard about a beach that was famous for sea glass and as I am a sea glass fanatic; we had to go! The rumors were true. Even though we got there late and when the tide was coming in; we still found a lot of sea glass. It was thrilling!!
We got back to our hotel late that night and were too tired to swim. We did have the energy to lie around eating fudge while we introduced Bryn to the joys of the tv show Seinfield. LOL.
Meanwhile in Florida...Ailey spent the day at Disney's Hollywood Studios where it rained all day. It didn't slow them down at all!
Day 4:
Today was another packed day. We watched the AM session of General Conference while we ate breakfast then we jumped in the car to head up the Olympic Peninsula. Oh my gosh! It was so gorgeous!! Unbelievably gorgeous! We saw Discovery Bay, stopped for ice cream in Sequim, checked out Port Angeles, and were absolutely blown away by the incredible beauty of Lake Crescent and Olympic National Park. It was also completely pouring rain the entire time so not many pictures were taken but boy did we stop and marvel at the stunning beauty all around us!! It was unreal!!
We were also going to do a little *literary* tour. Bryn and some of her friends had been reading the Twilight series so, yes, Forks was on the itinerary! LOL.
**On a side note we knew that something very exciting was going to be happening in our family but we didn't know exactly when and we had been waiting every day of our spring break trip for it to happen.**
As we drove into Forks we got a call from Hunter. The exciting thing was about to happen. He was going to propose to Reilly that day and Reilly had absolutely no idea! We were so excited! We hung up the phone with Hunter and continued on into Forks while we waited for their big announcement.
Was it raining in Forks? Of course it was. It was torrential! SO MUCH RAIN! It had been pouring rain all day on our tour of the Olympic Peninsula but in Forks you could officially say that it was DUMPING!
Forks is small and actually a little less interesting than I thought it would be. Many of the filming locations for the movies were actually in other towns like Kalama (which we did go through later on our return trip via Portland) and other cities but Forks does have some touristy sites to see. You can see Bella's house (although it isn't the one from the movie) these are the locations that the author picked out that are represented in the books. You can see a parking place for Dr. Cullen at the little hospital. The visitors center has Bella's truck(s) parked outside...the truck that was used in the movie and the truck described in the books. The visitors center has a little map of different filming sights and has life-sized cutouts of Bella, Edward, and Jacob looking out the windows. They also had that at Bella's house which was creepy.
Bella's trucks: book truck on the left and the actual truck used in the movies on the right.
It was fun to drive around but if you are wanting to plan a trip to Forks it might be a little disappointing. If you *really* want to do a Twilight Tour...get all the filming locations that are in other cities and in Portland. The locations are really spread out around WA and the Portland area. But if you want to get a visual of how the author *saw* everything then the real Forks will be interesting to you. It is somewhat different from how it is depicted in the movies. It is definitely flatter than I imagined and there are less trees but the rain is real!
The La Push area was much more interesting and our favorite part of our Twilight tour.
It was interesting to see La Push. It is very much as it was described in the books. You can also see the filming locations for the wolf pack house and Jacob's house from the movies. It was raining so hard that we didn't take any pictures. We were going to stop on our way back and then didn't. I'm kind of bummed because those places were legit and it would've been fun to have pictures of them. (When we got home we started watching the movies and it was fun to see those two locations in particular.)
The beaches in La Push were wild and beautiful! We visited First Beach and Rialto Beach. Some filming was done at both of those. At First Beach the waves were so big and the weather so blustery that it was a little too dangerous to tromp around on the beach. It sure was gorgeous though! Such rugged beauty.
The sea stacks are really cool!
Then we drove a few miles away to Rialto Beach and the conditions there were a bit better. We got out and clomped around for about an hour in the pouring rain. The black sand beach was gorgeous.
Swimming and surfing aren't allowed at Rialto Beach because it is a tree graveyard and the risk of being struck by giant logs and driftwood is too great.
Stunning!!
On this same day Ailey was on a warm and sunny beach in Florida. Two sisters at the beach at the same time on two different coasts with the entire United States stretched out between them. It was kind of cool and I wanted a picture of Bryn on the west coast with her arm stretched out and Ailey on the East cost with her arm stretched out... and... Ailey refused to comply. It could've been cool, Ailey! It could've been cool. LOL.
We got absolutely soaked but we had so much fun!!
After Rialto beach we grabbed some drinks and snacks from the little convenience store and realized that we had ZERO cell service and hadn't had cell service for hours. Uh-oh! When we finally drove back to an area that had service we had multiple text messages and voicemails from Reilly demanding that we CALL HER!!! Ha ha!!
It's official. They're engaged!!! We are so excited and happy for them!!
When we could call Reilly; we still had really spotty service. So we had to drive for almost an hour before we could talk to them and hear all of the details without constantly losing service. It was torture. It was so fun when we were finally able to really talk to them and could hear the whole story of how Hunter proposed! So fun! I'll write about that later.
Then it was back to Port Angeles where we ate some of the best cheeseburgers of our lives at Frugals. The locals were lined up to eat there!! It was packed. We saw them lined up there in the morning when we drove through and they were still lined up when we drove back that night so we knew that it had to be good and it WAS! We got back very late to the hotel and fell asleep immediately.
Meanwhile in Florida....Ailey spent the day at NASA and Cocoa Beach!
Day 5:
We had great plans for day 5 of our spring break and we ended up doing none of them. The weather forecast showed that a large and unexpected snow storm was hitting Snoqualmie Pass. Chains were required and there was avalanche danger. It looked like they would close the pass so that nixed all of our plans for the day. We had planned to do some shopping in North Bend, show Bryn Snoqualmie Falls, and eat at some fun places along the way. We also saw that a good sized windstorm was headed to Spokane that afternoon and that dangerous dust storms were projected for Moses Lake. Yay. Terrible and potentially dangerous weather the entire way home. What was the weather like in Seattle? Sunny and in the mid-50s. Craziness.
We contemplated staying in Seattle for another day but more snow was forecast for the pass the next day too so we made the decision to reroute to Portland (which is only 2 1/2 hours from Seattle) and head home that way. We were actually pretty cheery thinking we were getting two trips in one! We decided to do a little shopping while in Portland.
One stop was IKEA. I always have a running list of things that I need from IKEA. I hate that Spokane doesn't have one. This time I REALLY needed a particular wardrobe/cabinet thing and we actually had the space to haul it home since I decided not to make Bryn's spring break a Sisters Creed shopping trip. LOL.
These two were super excited to eat some spongey IKEA meatballs. I was NOT and did NOT. I was planning to eat a lunch of IKEA dessert. Foiled. "Due to supply chain issues..." there were no desserts. I was foiled again that the cabinet was out of stock too. It was also out of stock in Seattle. Ugh. IKEA had nothing that I wanted or needed. We wandered through and didn't find much of anything. Super disappointing. I did grab a couple of things for Ailey's college apartment. Hmmm...now that I'm thinking about it... it didn't even cross my mind to pick up anything for Kameron's college apartment. He's going to need a few things too. I have nothing for him. Ailey is pretty well stocked and he has zip. Yikes. He is going to need all of the same stuff that Ailey does. Hello perimenopausal brain fog. The struggle is real.
We continued to monitor the weather in Spokane. It didn't seem THAT bad. We were checking the video feed on our security cameras and things looked okay. It didn't even look that breezy. We called Reilly and told her not to worry about coming over after she got off of work to take care of Beverly. We would be home in plenty of time. We stopped in The Dalles to shop at one of my favorite stores. It was CLOSED due to being short staffed. What?! Foiled for a third time. We decided to eat at my favorite French Bakery. CLOSED. Foiled for a fourth time! By now we were annoyed so we ended up just going to Safeway where we got cheese so that we could eat it with our lefse while we drove home.
Kameron called us when we were about an hour from home so we video chatted with him the rest of the way. Reilly, Hunter, and even Ailey in FL were on the video chat too. We pulled up to the house...still on the video chat...and everything looked fine. Tyler went to unlock the front door while we started unloading the car. We were all still talking on the family video chat when suddenly Tyler yelled that we had a tree down. Where? I could see all of our trees and they were all still standing. He said that a big tree had crashed down and demolished part of the deck. We went running. (Kam, Ailey, Reilly, and Hunter were still on the video chat and came along with us) Sure enough there was a gigantic tree that had smashed onto our deck but from where?? All of our neighbors trees were still standing too. It looked horrific. I mean it could've been so much worse... like SO.MUCH.WORSE. But seeing part of your property destroyed is still horrifying. Your eyes can't believe what they are seeing. At this point Tyler yelled "Get off the @#$% phone!" and was in full "managing a disaster" mode!
No damage was done to the house. Thank goodness. Beverly was fine and didn't even seem stressed just excited that her people were home. Tyler yelled at Bryn to start putting stuff away while he and I went outside with headlamps (it was dark) to try to figure out where this tree had come from. Eventually I spied a spot at the very top of our huge (over 150 ft tall) white pine tree where there was a scar. The monstrosity that came down was only a LIMB! The wind was still blowing and we had some good sized gusts for most of the night. We did not sleep well! We woke up early the next morning to tree hell and more gusty winds. (Tree debacle to be continued) And thus ended Brynnie Johnson's Seattle Spring Break!
Thank goodness we called Reilly that day and told her not to worry about coming over to take care of Beverly because she would have been at our house and most likely outside with Beverly right around the time that thing came down. Scary.
Meanwhile (on a happier note) in Florida....Ailey went to Harry Potter World. Ailey confirmed that Harry Potter World is even more amazing that she thought possible. So jealous!
Ailey had one more day in Florida and spent more time at Universal.
She had such an incredible trip and I am so glad that she got to have this experience with her friends and classmates before graduation. Now let me tell you the difference between boys and girls. Ailey was marco poloing our whole family the entire time including Reilly and Hunter. We were marco poloing our adventures as well but Ailey was the true marco polo queen. She marco poloed everywhere she went...what she saw...what she ate. We loved it! She and her friends even had a marco polo group for all of them and their moms which was absolutely hysterical. More on that later! Ailey even went the extra mile to send videos and pictures to Kameron via FB messenger. Now when Kam went on his senior trip to Hawaii; he sent me one picture. The view from his hotel room when he arrived. He did text me nightly but this is what every single text said, "Still alive." So there you go. Boys vs Girls in a nutshell.
Spring Break 2022 was pretty exciting for everyone (except for Kam as he frequently reminded us). LOL.
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