Friday, April 20, 2012

Road trip to La Conner, WA

I finally had time to get these posted. It's been a while since I've posted anything.

Heading out of town is one of the greatest ways to recharge rundown batteries.
My friend and I headed for the border crossing on Friday morning of the long Easter weekend. We spent three hours and forty five minutes in line. But that was fine, we had excellent tunes to seat-dance to and enough coffee to keep us going until we got across the line....that was until drivers passing in the lane to our right kept politely pointed out that we had a flat front passenger tire.
rode on the rim for nearly two hours
THAT put a bit of a damper on our ability to pass the time in carefree abandon. But we got into the States, called AAA and met a great tow truck company owner, BJ of  "BJ's Towing" who helped us get to a tire shop - look him up if you're ever needing car help! So we ended up at Border Tire just inside Washington state. Where we just happened to meet other BC travelers getting "damaged" tires repaired too.
Border Tire was busy that Friday!
While waiting our turn, we found out that the day before there'd been a 'spill' on the Canadian side that left nails all over the road. Good clean up job guys! Border Tire probably did some booming business that holiday weekend.
spotted a rack of tires on display while we waited our turn







We spent the night in a cute little Best Western in Mt Vernon where I introduced my traveling buddy to "Sophie-Grace and Rosie". After a complimentary breakfast the next morning, we drove to La Conner.

We had spectacular weather our whole trip. Which seemed to bring every one and their dog out to enjoy it.
one of many pampered pooches paraded down the pavement
La Conner, WA is a gorgeous little 'seaside' town with charming and unique shoppes and restaurants. One store of mention is "The Wood Merchant". You could spend hours in there pouring over the things they carry. I would go back to La Conner for just that store.

a traveling guitar?
a MUST SEE store to believe it's amazing-ness!
this is solid glass, I kid you not - another stunning shop
metal letterpress characters
wooden letter press characters - be still my heart!
I can't say the food on our trip was something to write home about. I prefer how things are 'prepared' here but the locals around us all seemed happy with their meals. I'm kicking myself, but it didn't occur to me even once to take a snapshot any of my meals. Maybe I'll remember the next time we hit the road.


After spending a wonderful day walking up one side and down the other side of La Conner's main street, we took a scenic route home from there, making a couple of shopping stops along the way before we headed into a who-knew-how-long-it-would-be-wait at the border.

In startling contrast to the Friday morning's three hour and forty five minute wait to get into the States - Saturday evening, from start to finish we were back in Canada in twenty eight minutes. Srsly!
still love heading home despite a case of the nerves at the border
Note to self: remember to not travel to the U.S. on Holiday weekends unless you have the good road trip tunes, a Venti latte and healthy tires. :o)