July 29 - August 1, 2024 - Lafe and Faith's Odyssey

Ice Cream, Blueberries, and Budget Airlines

Monday morning came rapidly. Faith and I slept for a bit longer than we intended to before getting up to work and hang out with Julie and their kids Katie and Carl. The day was dreary and rainy, which seemed very apropos for the Pacific Northwest but was apparently the first rain they had had in weeks. The precipitation meant that the numerous berry farms in the area had to pause picking, so Carl and Katie got the day off to hang out with us. As lunch time rolled around, we headed over to see Faith’s grandparents’ apartment in an independent living complex. We hung out and chatted with them about all sorts of topics before, during, and after the facility’s provided lunch meal. As Monday afternoon rolled around, an important event came with it: bingo. I needed to get some work done, so Faith joined Arvin and Barb for the event. They (mostly Barb) got a few wins notched before it was over for the day. We stuck around a bit longer before heading a mile down the road to Edaleen dairy to get ice cream Faith had been raving about for the past month. Sadly, they had changed their cotton candy ice cream recipe that Faith was desperate for, but it was still very good and pleasantly cheap. We headed back to Rick and Julie’s to hang out and have a lovely homemade dinner with them. We stayed up talking with them, made another quick stop at Edaleen, then drifted off to sleep around midnight.

The next day was very similar: I got up and worked before heading upstairs with Faith to hang out with Julie and the kids. We spent headed over to see Faith’s grandparents, chat, and get some pizza for lunch. After lunch, Faith left to go thrift shopping with Julie and Katie in Bellingham while I worked and chatted with Arvin and Barb. Several hours later, the ladies returned to pick me up and take me back to Rick and Julie’s house for some excellent dinner burritos. We hung out with them until late in the evening or early the next morning depending on how you look at it.

On Wednesday, I once again woke up and worked while Faith got a bit more shut-eye. Once up and ready, we hung out with Julie and the kids and picked some blueberries from their backyard from the most berry-filled bushes I’ve ever seen. The bushes were chock-full of huge, delicious berries like I’ve never seen before. I picked in the normal way: one handful for the basket, one handful for my mouth, one handful for the basket, one handful for my mouth, and so on until we had mostly cleaned off the ripe berries. After coming in with our haul, Julie made some excellent blueberry muffins with some of the fresh berries while we worked and chatted. Conveniently enough, a good friend of ours from college had just gotten back to her childhood home in Lynden. So, we met her at Woods coffee, a popular local cafe, for a drink and conversation. We had a great time catching up with her and showing her our house before bidding her farewell and heading back over to Faith’s grandparents’ place. We arrived just after lunch time and found them at bingo, so we decided to get some more Edaleen ice cream and poke around the city park instead of interrupting. We came back just in time to find Arvin and Barb walking back to their apartment. We supplemented our afternoon conversation with a couple rounds of Shanghai, a card game they enjoy that I’ve mentioned before. We had an excellent dinner with them, finished up our games, and headed back to Rick and Julie’s as evening came. We came back to find them in the pool, so we tossed our swimsuits on and joined them until the cooling evening air convinced us otherwise. We hung out with them a while after and wished Rick a happy birthday a few minutes after midnight before heading off to bed.

The next morning, I worked some in the morning while hanging out with Julie before packing up and getting on the road towards our next destination. Before leaving Lynden, we stopped at Rick’s work to bring him some birthday coffee from Woods and at Faith’s grandparents’ to say goodbye. We are very thankful to all of them for giving us a place to stay and taking the time to hang out and talk with us. Our next stop was in Redmond a couple hours to the south outside Seattle to see Liberty and Scott, my aunt and uncle. We made our way down there through traffic and road construction and soon enough found ourselves pulling into their driveway. We got reacquainted with them and went on a quick walk around the lake they live by before hitting the road again. This drive was relatively short as they were dropping us off at the airport so we could fly back to Iowa for a family wedding. They were also flying back but didn’t leave until the next morning, so they had graciously offered us a place to park and a ride to SeaTac. The airport wasn’t terribly busy, so we made it through security easily and soon found ourselves boarding our flight around 9 PM. We were flying the budget airline Frontier, and boy was it budget. The seats were the airline equivalent of folding chairs: no reclining, a tiny fold-down tray, no movie player, no power plugs, little padding, and exposed metal supports. We didn’t pay much for the flight, so I shouldn’t have been surprised. Thankfully, we had seats next to each other and the flight was short. We got into Denver around midnight and wandered around for a while before finding a place to sleep uncomfortably for a chunk of our 10 hour layover.