Catching Up in 2015

We are heading out on a month-long adventure but thought it was time to catch up with our short trips of the first three months of the year.

We started with a New Year’s trip to Seattle where we met our son Jeff and spent a few days enjoying theater and dining.  We went there to see (for us the second time) the LBJ plays created by the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and Seattle Rep Theater.  The matinee was All the Way, the story of LBJ becoming President and his efforts to pass the Civil Rights Act.  The evening production was The Great Society which saw the unraveling of his presidency with the involvement in the Vietnam war.  The first play is also on Broadway and won the 2014 Tony Award for best play.  We strongly recommend seeing both of these.

Wanting to avoid the expense of two hotels rooms and parking fees, we opted to try AirBnB.  We stayed in a two bedroom downstairs apartment that had a small living room, a tiny kitchen and a good size bathroom.  Our experience was so good all three of us want to use this service in the future. 

After wandering Pike’s Place, we had a wonderful dinner at Matt’s in the Market.

We also were entertained by the Seattle Underground Tour.  We three had actually taken the tour when Jeff was a preschooler.  This tour was less "john" and more history, less funk and more info but still good.

We immersed ourselves in Chihuly glass.  Dale Chihuly began his glass sculpture career in Seattle.  We visited his museum on the grounds of the 1962 World's Fair.  Then we went to the Museum of Glass in Tacoma.  The exhibits are good but the Chihuly Bridge of Glass over the freeway is a wonderful giant assemblage of his work.

 We returned home to toast the New Year with friends Steve & Rita.

In February we braved the frozen East Coast and went to DC to enjoy time with Bennett. 

We all drove up to Troy to celebrate Jeff’s birthday with our family.
 

Back in DC, we took a once-a-year tour of the US Botanical Garden Production Facility wandering for a couple of hours through the green houses admiring their vast collections of plants. 

 Then we met family at Natural History to view the winners of the National Geographic Nature Photography Contest.  Words do not measure up to the photographs.

The cold spell broke on our last day and we took a walk to the Lincoln Cottage on the grounds of the Soldiers’ Home.

In March, our Springfield RV Club took a trip to Jackson where we dined, wined and laughed.  It was a lovely two days of making sure the RV is ready for more travels.