Dad comes for a visit

So dad had a work thing to do in Los Angeles and he managed to detour North for the weekend. Friday Ray and I picked him up and took him to Shanghai Garden with Beth and Chris. Then we took a tour through Uwajimaya to look at the geoducks and assorted odd produce.

We brought dad back to Grays Harbor, and the next day went to Quinault for lunch, a hike and a lovely drive.



The weather was sick. It was the first truly beautiful, warm spring day of the year, and it did not really come early enough but I was glad to get it. But not all was awesome in Quinault. The damage from December's storm is still pretty bad. There were enough trees knocked down that Ray got some sun. There were bald spots on the Quinault Loop trail and a lot of places where debris littered the woods. A whole big portion of the loop was closed by Gatton Creek. There are areas off to the east where no one is quite sure how the trails are. A waiter at the Lodge said there are 100 ruined acres over the ridge that are not being cleaned up in spite of the fact that the timber would be a boon in terms of income for the area. People aren't happy about it.



Dad tended to hog the camera — my camera — but I did manage to snap this of him at the Lodge. This is where FDR ate in 1937. I interviewed one of the people who sat next to him, Alice Esses, who at the time was a young teacher who had left her home in Oklahoma. FDR couldn't tell her enough how much he was doing to conserve soil in the Dust Bowl. The then-owner of the lodge would occasionally stop by to argue with FDR, who was voluble about wanting to make the area into a national park. Apparently the lodge owner thought it would kill business. 80 years later, the lodge wouldn't have much to offer visitors without the park nearby.

At night, we went to the Myrtle Street Jazz concert at the 7th Street because driving to the awesomest bar ever was just kind of a drive after going to Quinault. This way we got to see Ray in action as theatre board prez, introducing the two schools' musicians with a line he stole from me and which flopped. Sorry 'bout that, baby. Dad loved the Hoquiam Jazz Band and even called out their lead trombonist, Casey, to shake his hand and tell him he did a great job. Dad is a former trombonist for his high school band. Also performing were the Aberdeen Goldenaires and the all-girls "All That Jazz." One of the singers, a sophomore, was preggers and I thought she was pretty brave, but shaking someone's hand for not being afraid to go out in public is kind of silly. I particularly loved how, after Hoquiam band director Roger White said some of his kids did sports and they had to come to band practice at 7 a.m., Pat Wilhelms trumped it by saying her kids had to start practice at 6:50 a.m. And they didn't get the high school rivalry joke of mine Ray told. Is irony dead?



On Sunday we went to Seattle after running into my boss at Starbucks. We hit Olympia first, where dad got a snootfull of the hippie-redneck nexus that is the farmers market. Ray got Wagner's cinnamon bread and I got purple collards. We took a walk at Tumwater Falls. Very pretty place.



We then went to the Ballard Locks, pictured above. A bunch of little boats (well, the merrymakin' was a pretty dang big yacht, as was the M.Y. Happy Place) went through, and tied in as the water level raised them 20 feet. The Happy Place had some serious issues. I got the vibe that the guys in it didn't really know what they were doing. You could see the big Schnapps bottle inside the back end. They got yelled at by the locks guy. The Drifter was the coolest boat — wood trim, typical fishing vessel styling, a crew of young hipsters couldn't detract from the pretty blue boat. We got kind of wet, but it was fun, and the botanical gardens were pretty and smelled nice.



We ate at Ray's Boathouse. It was too good an opportunity to pass up.

We got caffeine at Pike Place in an art cafe. I should start painting bright, abstracted-but-not-completely graphic flowers and sell them for like $150 a pop. People seem to like them, judging from the red "sold" stickers on the tags at the place. We also saw a guy at the newsstand with a knotted, dread-locked beard (two locks) that hung past his waist. It must be kind of heavy.

Ray and I dropped dad off at the Sea-Tac Crest. Here are some reviews that make me feel like a bad person for putting my parents up there. This is Hugh and Janice's favorite place to stay if they'll be gone a week. It was definitely cheap, but my oh my, it is certainly a Roach Motel. It did not help that dad's neighbor got a 4 a.m. "wakeup call" from the staff about an underage girl in the lobby. Yikes.

We made it back home by about nine.