Our Trip, part V

The Final Journey

After taking the ferry back to the mainland we headed straight for the border. I always feel anxious when I know I'm on my way back to the States. I start feeling homesick even before I've left. I try to memorize every tree and building and blade of grass. I don't want to forget anything about the place where I grew up. It was especially hard this trip after seeing all of my family and being at the beach and amongst the trees. All of those "things" make up who I am and how I think. I can't undo any of those influences on my being. I didn't want to start bawling in front of my kids so I just looked out the window and took some photos. 

The Burnaby skyline way off in the distance. I miss how the clouds get hung up on our coastal mountains. 

Another city skyline.

I used to wish that I lived in this windmill when I was a kid. It looks like it was transplanted right off some Tuscan hillside. 

It felt like we spent so much of our trip in the car. No one seemed to mind, though.

Somewhere near La Connor.

Will and I had decided that on the last night of our trip we would stay at a hotel somewhere. We knew that after spending seven nights in the tent trailer we would deserve to spend the night in a real bed and have a real shower. We had driven past the Tulalip Casino many times and decided that would be a nice place to stay. At first I was nervous about staying in a hotel with a casino, but then I saw lots of other kids there. I didn't feel quite so bad after that. Will and I love the art of the Pacific Coast First Nations peoples so this was up our alley. I wanted to steal every framed piece off the walls. The halls displayed lots of great art and the casino had a water theme. Fishing and the ocean were such an important part of the Coastal peoples' way of life. 

Check out this shower with the three water heads. A little piece of heaven right there. 

We were even provided with super soft bath towels and robes. 

And the piece de resistance...

the mini bar! There was pop and juice, champagne and lots of little bottles of booze! It was glorious! Moira liked that there were chocolate bars and tins of nuts. I told her she wasn't even allowed to breathe on them. I could only imagine what they must charge for those things. 

We also had a wide screen TV which the kids immediately turned on. A week without tv and they were starting to get the jitters. They didn't even mind that there were no cartoons on. They were happy to watch anything.

Inside the entrance of the hotel.

The outside of the hotel.

Coming into the main entrance of the complex was this great scene of a fisherman trying to spear salmon and killer whales near by. There were water falls and a pretty walk way around it all. The entrance to the casino was straight ahead, where as the hotel entrance was off to the side. I joked to Will that it was nicer walking into the casino than it was the hotel. 

I

I had to take a shot of this man wearing traditional clothing and catching his meal the old way juxtaposed against the very modern hotel. It kind of says a lot of the First Nations in the 21st century - they are still able to spear fish and hold on to old rights as well as have the modern casinos. These are things that we newcomers are not allowed to share. Funny.

After our rest at the hotel, we decided to take the scenic route through downtown Seattle instead of taking the 405 around the city. Moira and I get a kick out of driving under the city. Plus we like to look at the Space Needle. This was the first time in a long time that I wasn't the one driving so I actually got to take a good look.