A Vacation with Louiza ( Day 2)

After a night spent in a wind tunnel thanks to Louiza who left the fan running all night, I woke up with a headache and was worried I was going to get sick but as the day progressed my headache went away. So no harm done but I will not sleep in a wind tunnel for a while... The plan for the day is to get to Bellevue Washington by about 3 pm to check into the hotel and go to dinner at a former doctoral graduate student, Tosh, who lives in Issaquah and works in Bellevue. Tosh and I have not seen each other for a while but we spoke on the phone few times. 

After checking out of our hotel in Vancouver Washington, we headed north on I-5. I asked Louiza to program Mount St Helens on her GPS which she did. It turned out Mount St Helens would add about 3 hours total to our journey to Bellevue so we decided to do it... We exited I-5 and headed east down small roads and passing small villages on our way to Mt St Helens National Park. The landscape was beautiful and very different from Alabama. There was water everywhere and people were fishing and boating.. As we were getting close to the mountains, we lost our cellular service so now we are on our own .. As we drove deeper into the mountain up a gravel road, we started to doubt our directions but we pushed on none the less as we wanted to see volcanic mountain. As we got higher in the mountains, the clouds moved in fast so we were not going to have the view we were after.. I also started to worry about rain at that altitude and driving on a very narrow gravel road so I made the decision to stop climbing and go back down... Louiza agreed and so we did.. disappointed but happy to be safe ... on the ascent road we only saw two cars so not many people were going up... 

 Back on I-5 we drove on to Bellevue which we reached around 3:30 pm. We checked in and got our room and then I called Tosh to see what time he was expecting us. He asked us to come right away since the food was ready and so we did ... Tosh is a great cook! He made an excellent meal with plenty of choices for me and Louiza ... Tosh knew Louiza when she was younger but has not seen her in a long time so he was shocked to see her all grown up! Tosh’s wife and two daughters were so sweet to us and we really enjoyed the warm welcome to the Pacific Northwest. With the jet lag bearing down on her, Louiza was showing signs of sleepiness and fatigue so we decided to cut our visit short and head back to the room and call it the night.