A dear friend visited this past week, but we didn’t take off for the hills.  Instead we planned short day trips or half day trips.  And it was a delight.  We went to a favorite park with a small conservatory full of orchids.  We wandered the heavily Chihouli’d downtown environs of Tacoma, Washington.  We went to Seattle to do the Experience Music Project and were unmoved, until we went next door to the Science Fiction Museum which delighted us both!  Almost 15 years of online friendship and we did not know we were both sci-fi fans!  We visited Seattle’s original skyscraper–the Smith Tower which has wonderful shiny brass-bound elevators still run by human beings and they glide up to the 35th floor with such a graceful swoosh and smoothness that you want to ride all day.  On the 35th floor, just beneath the final pyramidal apartment (lucky dwellers!) that cap the tower, you can walk all round on the outside to take pictures of Seattle and the Olympic Mountains across the water.  We drove across that water to Alki Beach and had pizza at Pegasus and it was fabulous pizza!  I bought a vintage coffee cup to have morning memories of a day well spent.

We ate well, mostly here at home, but sometimes while out and about (like the unsurpassable pizza!)  He had a Nor’west Bison-burger which he was sure would sustain him for a week.  We had breakfast smoothies on the ‘in house’ days in front of the television watching comedy while I experimented with knitting patterns.  We watched hummingbirds and bumblebees in contention over custody of the foxgloves in the south garden.

On the last day, we drove to Mt. Rainier—a short trip since we live only 30 miles from our splendid volcanic snow cone.  It was an adventure for us, too because it was our first time there since the beloved old 360 degree visitor center was  demolished and a new one built.  I mourned the old building’s demise, the photographic vistas it provided were unsurpassed.  The new center is nice, has pleasant interactives that all seem a bit dumbed down to the level of third graders, but at least it is far more roomy.  It lacks the sci-fi Jetson like atmosphere of the old building and is more concrete-wood hunting lodge-ish.  Likewise, the lodge at Paradise is enlarged and braced so it no longer risks being collapsed by snowfall.  The weather was perfect, the waterfalls danced and the wildflowers were pushing through the snow to tempt us back in a month.

And last, of course, we drove him back to the airport.  A final sad hug good-bye and forlorn wave through the window…in post-911 days, of course, there is no lingering to say farewell inside.  It was sad to say good-bye, but ever so rewarding to finally meet face to face.  For, among other humorous attributes, his old screenname from AOL days meant I could finally say that this old pagan “found Jesus” at long last!

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