recap on several of the trips

so, it's been a crazy whirlwind of stuff since my parents arrived (as you can tell from my previous blog post).

spirit of washington dinner train
we went for brunch on the dinner train last sunday. it was VERY bumpy since most of the route uses freight tracks. the food was eh, but it was one of those things that is kinda cool to say that you did. if you're thinking about it, do the dome car without a doubt. it was worth the money. i don't know if the whole thing was really worth the money, and i'm not sure if i'd really recommend it, but it was kinda neat (especially since i didn't pay for it!) .

leavenworth
i enjoyed leavenworth when we were there on monday. it was like a wussed-out version of fredericksburg. it needs some work before it gets there, but it was cute (and HOT). the drive out was also beautiful. again, it's one of those it's nice to do once but i wouldn't make a habit of it. we went to muenchen house for lunch where i had a pretty good beer brat. the drive out wasn't bad at all, but i would imagine that it would suck in most anything other than the nearly perfect weather we had that day.

san juan islands
today we took the victoria clipper iii to the san juan islands for whale and sealife searching. it was a beautiful cruise out there. we saw LOTS of animals and birds including one of the resident orca pods which was totally amazing. after the whale watching, we went back to friday harbor for 2 hours which was a total mess due to lack of map reading (not my fault) and the inability of other passengers to follow crew instructions for re-boarding the ship. i thought that i was going to go nuts on the way back (3 hours back from friday harbor to seattle) because it was already 4:30 pm and we'd been on the boat since 6:45 am. we got back to seattle around 7:30 pm. it was about 3.5 hours out to friday harbor to drop people off, about 2 or so hours of whale watching, about 2 hours back in friday harbor (where we had a crappy lunch), and then 3 hours back to seattle. it was a looooong day. i would recommend it though. it was really beautiful. i also greatly enjoyed being able to see the big bridge at deception pass.

that is all for now. i've been up since 5:30 am (it's 10:15 pm now), so i'm going to BED. GOODNIGHT!