Friday, October 25

An Afternoon Exploring Snoqualmie and a Flu Shot

Mom has been looking at random Facebook posts and really wanted to go to this farm near North Bend/Snoqualmie called Rockwood Farm.  We decided we would go.  I took a day off from work to go and to get a flu shot as well.  I looked up the address and told mom I would meet her in Rainier.  I got all my stuff ready the night before so I could sleep in as late as possible.

The next day I got up around 8:15, got ready and met mom at her house.  The weather was horrible and I was upset because yesterday was so nice.  We were going to get soaked today.  Yay!  My favorite!  Not!  We took the Expedition and headed out via Spanaway, Puyallup, Auburn and got onto Hwy 18.  It still wasn't raining yet.  We might get lucky today.  Fingers crossed.

We got onto I-90 and then immediately got off at the next exit.  We followed mom's directions to our location.  Throughout the drive through these rural backroads, the autumn leaves overtook the landscape as we followed the river to our next turn.  It was so pretty back here.  I told mom on the way back we needed to stop in a few places just to take pictures of the "fallness".

We continued following the directions and drove past a small county park.  We made one more turn and slowed down so we didn't miss our address.  We saw it as we drove past it.  We noticed there was no place to park so we turned around and headed back to the park where we would park and walk to it.  It still was dry and we could see bits of Mount Si.  The clouds were rolling in.  We might get wet.  We pulled into the park and there were a bunch of people standing in the way like they didn't know to get out of the way of a moving vehicle.  We grabbed our stuff, used the restroom and walked the quarter of a mile to the entrance to the farm.


It didn't take us long to get there.  When we arrived we were appalled on how visitors had no regard for the property and have torn it up with their vehicles.  The farm may decide to not allow people here after that.  We found out we came a little bit too late in October because we have had some windy weather and most of the leaves were off the trees by this point.  Mom was happy to come here anyway.  


We would have to come a little earlier next fall.  We got our photos and on the way back to the park it started to rain.  Ugh.

I asked mom if she wanted to go anywhere else and she said she didn't know.  How about Snoqualmie Falls?  We haven't been there in a while.  She said sure.  On the way back to Snoqualmie we stopped in that one spot I wanted to see before we left the area.  We had to make sure there was a pull off and there was plenty of room.  No cars were coming so we took a few of them trying to avoid the rain as much as we could.  No one likes soaked camera lenses.



We followed the road into the small town of Snoqualmie and followed the signs to parking for the falls.  I was trying to remember the last time I was here.  It had to have been back in 2012 from the Ape event with mom.  That was a very long time ago.  Holy cow.  It started to rain harder when we pulled into the parking lot.  We grabbed our jackets, umbrellas and walked across the pedestrian bridge.  We walked to several of the viewpoints and there was so much spray and fog everywhere that it made it hard to take pictures without getting super soaked.  I did managed to get a few pictures of the falls with my phone and mom's camera.



We tried looking for the cache, Puget Sound Energy: Snoqualmie Falls Upper Park (GC6NGB4) that was nearby but couldn't find it.  We gave it a good look but it was so rainy we gave up.  We were already soaked.  We walked back to the lot and I wanted to find at least one for today so we found the one in the parking lot near a picnic area.  Puget Sound Energy:  Time for a Picnic (GC6NGBT) was hidden on the picnic table.  It made for a quick find since it was raining pretty hard.


We drove back through Snoqualmie and under I-90 out to Hwy 18.  I hate this area because people always try to cut you off and then they go slow through Tiger Mountain.  It's annoying.  There was lots of rain.  When we got to 167 there was a little bit of traffic at the interchange and a tiny bit on the merge onto 512.  I called Trish to see if she wanted to meet us somewhere for lunch but she didn't answer her phone.  I had remembered that she had her chili cook off at work that day.  We got off at South Hill and drove up Meridian.  We decided to have Ivar's for lunch since we were here and we never have it all that often.

We both got a 3 piece fish and chips and my favorite tartar sauce.  I paid since mom technically "drove".  It hit the spot and it was tasty.  


We continued down Meridian and cut over at Frederickson towards Hwy 7.  We took the interchange onto Hwy 507 and into Yelm.  We stopped at the Walmart to get our flu shots.  This was the first year I've ever had one.  I decided to get one since we would be doing a bunch of traveling this next year.  Plus, our trip to Pittsburgh is in a couple weeks.  I was super stoked.

It took a while so we did our blood pressure and peed while we waited.  About 40 minutes later we were done and we got to wear weird Band-Aids.  


We were required to walk around the store for 10 minutes before we left due to how we would be affected by the shot.  We grabbed a few things before we told the pharmacist we were good, paid for our stuff (I bought Halloween candy) and we left.  Mom needed to go to Safeway for fruits and veggies so we stopped there for a few minutes.  We drove back to her house, I got into my Escape and headed home to relax.  The shot actually gave me a wicked headache.  I took some Advil, watched football, worked on my blog and went to bed around 11:15.

Next Adventure:  Masquerade Ball and Some Geocaching

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