4th of July Week (Blaine, WA)

37 years!

We celebrated our 37th anniversary in Bellingham one day early on 29 June.

We ate lunch at a Greek restaurant, walked through an amazing park, and did a little shopping.

 

Dan found Whatcom Falls Park online and thought we should visit it while we were in Bellingham.  We were very surprised to find this little emerald jewel of a city park.  Neighborhoods surround the park giving easy access to families, joggers, and walkers to visit by taking one of the many paths leading into the park.

We felt like we were back in the North Cascades with the water, tall trees, the green vegetation, and silence all around us.  It was hard to believe there was a city bustling within walking distance.  Besides walking paths and play areas, we were able to view a fish hatchery, a small dam, natural waterfalls, and our favorite - this beautiful stone bridge.

 

One path took us to the Whatcom Falls and another took us along the Gorge.  If you happen to be in the area, this is a must see!

Along the Gorge Path

The Surrounding Area

The past couple of days have been very overcast with lots of rain so Sandy wasn't packing her usual camera gear...like her telephoto lens.  She regretted it later.

We sighted this Bald Eagle sitting on a rock during low tide and not too far from the road....just far enough though to be out of range for Sandy's 300mm lens.  She took the shot anyway, because she wanted proof that we actually saw the Bald Eagle sitting there...

After that exciting sighting, we drove out to Semiahmoo Resort and point.  We viewed Canada from across the water with a bunch of Seagulls watching us.

We checked out this old boat.  It has a lot of character and those are Seagulls sitting in a row on the rooftop.

We also took a stroll through the Peace Arch Park.  Within the park, we were able to walk across the border into Canada and back.  We walked out to the center near the arch where we could see both border gates staying busy with a long line of cars.

They have some beautiful gardens to stroll around in and artwork on display from both countries.

4th of July
How was everyone's 4th of July celebration?  Lots of eating, visiting, and viewing fireworks?

Not a rain cloud in the sky!

Us?  Well, the rain stopped and the sun came out!  Talk about good timing!  We went to Blaine to see the street festival and the classic car show.  We were not expecting it to be so busy!  Wow, where did all of the people come from?   The classic car show was spread out over quite a few blocks so it was easy to view most of the cars.

Classic Car Show

It wasn't so easy to view the vendors.  The area was so packed with people that we gave up on seeing what was good to eat or for sale.

Sandy managed to get a few candid shots of people enjoying their day...

Cute!  Eagle kissing? the young lady...

A young patriot

Even the dogs were looking patriotic!

We were too tired to go watch fireworks.  Between the commercial fireworks and home-bought fireworks, it sounded like quite a joyful celebration...that went on until after midnight. We finally fell asleep around 1 pm surrounded by two scared cats.  Poor guys did not know what to think of all that booming.  Not to worry - they are back to their old selves - begging to go outside, getting into things, and the list goes on....

Last, but not least...we traded in our 2005 Subaru WRX for a 2012 Honda Fit Sport with 5 speed automatic transmission.  We made the trade on Monday and so far, we are quite happy with it.

Dan's left ankle has been detoriating over the years, and we needed to move from a manual transmission with clutch to an automatic transmission.  Cars with automatic transmissions that can be towed four wheels down behind motorhomes is much more limited than manual transmission cars. 

The Honda Fit is small, light weight, handles well, and has good interior space for a small car.  We will miss the all wheel drive of the Subaru, and the turbo charged engine power.  The turbo Subaru did require premium fuel though.   It will be nice to use lower price regular fuel in the Honda, and more miles per gallon as well. 

Travel day on Wednesday.  We are moving to La Conner, WA.  Happy Trails!

White Sulphur Springs, MT

We decided to celebrate our Independence Day 4th of July weekend in a small ranching town called White Sulphur Springs (WSS) – population: a little under 1,000. We started the day with their parade. The lineup took longer than the actual parade, but they made up for it by going up Main Street, turning around, and coming back down again. The 10-minute parade became 25 minutes. It may have been short and sweet, but it was twice as nice!

Cows – 9, Cowboys – 0
After the parade, we had choices of going to a dog show and art festival, or to a Ranch Rodeo. We have never seen a Ranch Rodeo (though we have seen traditional rodeos) and we found it very interesting. There were 9 teams of 4 ranch hands or ranchers. The competition included different skills in a cowboy’s workday: the ranch horse, branding, penning, doctoring, cow milking, and counting. Why the score above? Well, the teams were doing very well competing against each other until they got to the wild cow milking competition. The cows were smarter than the average cow. Not a single cow got lassoed during that competition. Watching the horse and rider working as one was amazing. We added some action shots of the rider and horse to our Webshot album. Please see above link.

That evening, the town put on a fantastic fireworks show. While waiting for the official show to start, the locals were entertaining themselves with very large fireworks. They were being shot from all over town. After dark, the town’s firework show went on for an hour. Well Done!

Like many small towns, White Sulphur Springs is showing signs of hard times due to our economy. The town may need some fixing up and paint, but it is clean and shows plenty of pride. The locals were very friendly and proved to be down-to-earth, heartwarming, and very patriotic.