Our first stop was at the Spanaway quilt store off of Pacific Ave. As soon as I parked the van, Mr. Gowan called me about some kittens he recently acquired. He talked to me for about 15 minutes about how he could get rid of them and needed my help. I told him to put them on craigslist and I will make an announcement on Facebook. I don't know if he ever did that or not. We got our passport stamped and was handed a block packet. We went back to the van and went to the next one.
The next one took us down the road to a quilt store that moved since this years shop hop. It was hard to find a parking spot. We went in quickly, got our passport stamped and our package of block materials. Each store had some unique quilts on the walls. We escaped before the parking lot got extra busy.
The final one in Tacoma was very memorable. We found a place to park, thank goodness it was near the quilt store, we went in, had our passport signed and got our block bundle. We were just about to leave when a whole bus of old ladies came in and every single one of them had a walker. I think it took all 12 of them about 10 minutes to get through the door and we had to wait. We hustled to the van and followed our route north, which brought us to our first state park, Dash Point.
I haven't been to Dash Point in quite sometime. Last time I was here it was with a friend from Federal Way and we wanted to go on a mini adventure. So we hung out on the beach. Today, we had some time between quilt stores to get out and stretch out legs. We drove into the park as far as we could, I parked the van and I ran down, grabbed this one quickly while grandma guarded the van. The walk down was fast but the walk back up was a bit more slower, those darn hills!
The next closest spot on our GPS was Saltwater State Park, just up the road from where we were.
This was my first time to this state park and I saw the sign for it often driving back and forth on I-5. We pulled in and had to sit behind a California licensed plate car while a woman read all of the stuff on the side of the welcome building. She realized we wanted to go in so she moved her car. We drove down the hill and to the cache site. We found it quickly since it was an arm's length away from the van, stamped passport and logged our names. The great thing about this series is that there is always a bathroom nearby. Used the facilities and enjoyed the beach a couple yards down from where we parked.
The weather never got nice and rained later on in the afternoon and we managed not to get wet, which is a plus! We had a great time grabbing the two state park caches and enjoyed the beaches.
We found out the road we were on would take us right to the Des Moines quilt store. I remember driving to this one last year because next door is a hot dog restaurant with a Seahawks pig in the front of it. I really thought about stopping and taking a picture with it but decided to stay on schedule.
We went to Kent, Covington, Black Diamond, Buckley, Orting and Puyallup all in a few hours. We stopped in Black Diamond for some lunch at the Diary Queen for the five dollar lunch meal. It was delish.
We finished up at the Country Mouse in Eatonville because we had some time to spare. There, we got the quilt poster because it was cheaper than the rest of the stores. We got home about dinner time.
Next Adventure: The Rest of the Shop Hop and Tolmie State Park.
No comments:
Post a Comment