Old Time...Merced

I'm spending the weekend here in Merced for Gateway Church's 25 anniversary celebration. I arrived LATE last night after my flight got all rerouted. Today I'm pretty free until dinner tonight.

So I spent the morning driving around Merced looking at some old places to see how the city has changed over the years.


I stopped by our old home. As I was taking this picture the lady who bought it from us came out and we ended up talking for a while. She gave me a tour of the backyard. It was nice to see the place where so much of life happened!


From there I drove past the two apartments we lived in before we bought our home. After checking out the new UC Merced I headed through downtown and "just happened" to end up near Marie Callendar's and I had to stop by for a piece of chocolate satin pie. This picture is to simply to make Stacey jealous!

Interpretation Please...

I was fascinated by these signed posted in the railway at Seattle's King Street Station...our final destination. No body taught me the meanings of these signs in drivers education. If any of you could provide some interpretation for me, I would be very grateful. The middle yellow sign doesn't look like a very encouraging end result. And the bottom orange sign seems to demostrate the bad results of drinking and driving a train. I'd love your wisdom on any of these!

Disaster!

On our trip westward we saw two evidences of destruction.





First of all, as we traveled through Wisconsin we saw dramatic evidence of the flooding that has swamped the mid-west. Our train slowed down to 10 miles an hour for a stretch where there was water right up to the tracks on both sides. Out both windows it looked like a massive lake. Only, there was never a lake here before. This was a farmer's field.

This track was shut down until just a few days before we came through. They told us that the water level had risen 5 feet above the tracks! There is one river nearby that floods at 7 feet and the highest it had ever been was 9 feet. During the last flooding it measured at 14 feet!

On our eastbound return trip we were able to cross this stretch at full speed. The water had gone down some, but the lake was still pretty huge.




The second bit of destruction we saw was a derailment from just a few days earlier. This train derailed because of high winds that blew it off the track. They told us that no one was hurt, but it was still pretty sobering to hear and to see as we were speeding along at 80 miles an hour.

On the way home Stacey sat next to a freight train engineer in the lounge car who was returning from a west coast delivery. He told her that the train had been carrying toilet paper and Oreos...nice combination! Policy is that whatever is spilled is simply buried where it is spilled. He was tempted to stop and take a few packages of Oreos as he went by earlier, but would probably have lost his job.

He went on to tell a story of when they had a spill of a load of corn. They buried it, but evidently not deep enough. The local bears got to it after it had had just the right time to ferment. Needless to say, they had a lot of bears who were in their way and had little motivation to move!

Happy Birthday to Me!

I got to spend my birthday in Montana, North Dakota and probably a little bit of Minnesota as I slept.

At lunch Stacey snuck a candle to our waiter and my New York cheese cake came with a candle in it. They frown at fires on the train, so they didn't light it. (I hope my wish will still come true!) I then got to open my present while the train rolled down the track. I got a new game called Puerto Rico. It looks great! Now I've just got to learn how to play and convince others to play with me!

Speaking of dessert...below is a picture of the chocolate raspberry torte which I enjoyed at each lunch and dinner on the way to Washington. It tasted even better than it looks!

Our Eagle

I mentioned in an earlier post that we saw a bald eagle the second day after we arrived at Birch Bay. This first picture is taken from our condo porch. The second picture is after walking up closer to it.

It ended up that we saw this eagle regularly. A couple of the evenings around dinner time it would catch a fish from the bay and then take it to a tree right next to the condo where we all ate together and would join us for dinner. I preferred our dinner which wasn't still breathing and flopping around as we ate it!

On the Track Again

In just one hour our train will be pulling away from King Street Station in Seattle WA. We had a great couple of days here in Seattle checking out Pike's Place Market and their low-flying fish, the new Seattle Aquarium, Pioneer Square, hiking the waterfront and having dinner at Stacey's brother and his wife's house. (I finally got to meet Stuart who for the last three years I wondered if he really existed or not!)

In two days we will be back home. It looks like we are just going to miss the hot weather...yeah!

What a Cute Couple

I learned this week that Birch Bay sunsets are one of the most beautiful things. This pictures combines two of the most beautiful things in the world with me right in between them!

Golfing Adventure

The Postma guys all went golfing yesterday. It was a gorgeous day and the gorgeous course to play at. The most adventurous moment was when I teed off with my 5-iron and promptly shattered the shaft of my club (on a nearly perfect hit I must add). It was a rental club and the lady didn't quite believe that I didn't break it doing something irresponsible until two older men who had been near by vouched for my character!

Great Start

We woke up this morning to find a bald eagle perched on a post in the water just outside our condo. What a great way to start the morning! We ended the day looking over the same spot watching the sun set in beautiful shades of red over the distant islands and then walking later in the dark looking at the bright path of the moon in the water. Beautiful!

In between we enjoyed a full day at the water-slide park. The kids had a ball (and I did too...I just didn't last as long as they did).

Dinner was oysters on the grill and then three types of salmon on the grill as well. It was wonderful! I'd never had pineapple on the grill, but that was wonderful as well.

Tomorrow we hope to spend some time with our friends from China who just happen to be in Lynden for two days this week...what a great coincidence (although we know that there is no such thing as a coincidence...just plans that we didn't know about). We are eager to talk for a little while.

I didn't make time to load any pictures. We'll see if I find time for that tomorrow.

On Solid Ground!

We are back on solid ground again (although not with a solid wireless connection!). It is strange though...we have times where we feel like we are still swaying with the train.

Our train arrived this morning at 10:15 in downtown Seattle (that is even a little bit early!). We are now settled into our abode in Birch Bay.

The train trip was spectacular! Some of this highlights included seeing much of the flooded areas of Wisconsin, the big sky of Montana, Glacier National Park, the Cascade Mountains and the coast of the Sound coming into Seattle. We thought of Kirk and Karen as we rolled into Glacier National Park since the first thing we saw was the golf course at the lodge there at the foot of the Rockies. Add that to your list of "must play" courses!

The amenities were great. We ate like royalty while on the train...two huge breakfasts, made to order burgers for lunch, and dinners of steak or poached salmon. And those were just some of the options! On top of that, for dessert Brant enjoyed Hagen-Daas chocolate ice cream while Stacey and I chose either a chocolate-cherry torte or creme-brule. It was way too much food, but way to good to pass up!

Our family sleeper car was a nice quiet place to pass the time when we weren't passing the time playing games, reading or sight-seeing out of the lounge car (or eating!). At night they transformed our room into four beds. We must have gotten used to sleeping on the train as we went along since we all agreed that we slept much better the second night than the first (or maybe that was because of the wine and cheese tasting in the dining car we enjoyed that second afternoon!).

Our choice of mode of travel was confirmed when Brant asked if we could travel on train instead of airplane every time we have to travel!

We are looking forward to a relaxing rest of the week here at Birch Bay. I will try to get some pictures loaded when it isn't so late!

The Adventure Begins!

Here I am sitting in the Union Station lounge in Chicago.

Our first leg of our train trip left this morning at 8:21 a.m. from Holland, MI. It was an uneventful trip, which was nice. We saw some beautiful scenery through MI -- fields of blueberries and corn, lakes and rivers, deer. And then through Indiana we got to enjoy the heart of Gary -- abandoned buildings, smoking factories.

As sleeping car passengers we get to enjoy the benefits of the Metropolitan lounge. This must be what it is like to fly first class! We have a private waiting area with cushy chairs, free soda, pretzels, Internet, televisions (and a lady snoring next to us). It isn't ritzy, but it is much nicer than waiting in the crowded waiting room!

In a half hour we board our train and get to settle into our family sleeper car. We are looking forward to a relaxing couple of days traveling! Seattle here we come!