Sunday, July 22

Sunday, July 22: Port Townsend to Bellingham: 78 Miles           

A cloudy day with occasional drizzle. We checked out of the motel at 8:45 and boarded the ferry to Whidbey Island at 9:15. It was a short, half-hour ride and an easy drive from there to Bellingham, where we arrived at our son Tom’s house at noon. There he was, with Deb, Molly, and Abby, three birds, two cats and a snake to greet us. Deb and Abby were pitting and slicing thousands of cherries for drying – a chore I vividly remembered assisting in four years ago. Didn’t volunteer this time. Joy, Tom and the girls walked over to our B&B three blocks away, while I drove the car. There we met Ricci, our host at the Canfield House, an immaculate Victorian in which we have a canopy bed and our own bath. Very clean, very comfortable, very convenient. Ricci has a pot of spices boiling on the stove for atmosphere, and that will take getting used to.

Saturday morning, as I was driving north toward Port Townsend, I experienced an unexpected heart problem. I have been living with atrial fibrillation (an irregular heartbeat) for more than 25 years. Normally this means no more than an occasional skipped beat (and a daily pill to minimize its irregularity and another to thin my blood to prevent coagulation), but something wasn’t working. I pulled off the road, took a few deep breaths, and checked my pulse. It was very fast. I didn’t feel like fainting; the sensation was more like being underwater. Not a good omen. I soon  recovered, we had lunch, and I felt fine while Joy and I took turns driving the rest of the day.

But we decided it wasn’t worth the risk of driving home for another week or ten days after our visit in Bellingham, and then having the same experience or worse on some remote country road in the Dakotas.  So we made reservations to fly home next Saturday. Faithful Priscilla will stay in Bellingham with Tom.

So the trip is over. 4750 miles, including perhaps 500 miles of side trips.  22 days of hard (and not so hard) driving, in temperatures ranging from the 50s to the 100s, through broiling sun and driving rain, gusting winds and calm. The country is vast and bountiful, the people we met friendly and interesting. We saw great museums and exciting works of art. We were in awe of the courage and determination of the emigrants who followed the trails west, and of the patience and resilience of the native American peoples displaced, attacked, and abused for generations. We saw many extraordinary natural phenomena and missed many others.

But we had a wonderful time. 

Our Travels, July 1 -  22, 2012