Part 2 of 2 (Back to Part 1)
The next morning we headed East to meet my brother and his wife at Mt. St. Helens. They had driven up from their home and we met them at the Mt. St. Helens tourist information building. We were just finishing up a really nice tour of the information center when Barb & Chris walked in – perfect timing! We all got in Barb’s car together and drove to a picnic area at the base of the mountain. Now Chris has always been a real “connoisseur” when it comes to eating, where I have always just been “some kind of sewer”. Out from the back of the car they unloaded coolers and picnic baskets filled with several bottles of fine wine, cheese, classy beer, pate, spiced meats, veggies, 4 kinds of breads, some spreads, sauces and enough stuff that we filled up a large picnic table and had to look over the piles of delicacies to see one another. It was glorious. The cool wind kept on trying to blow everything off the table but somehow we kept it all secure.
After lunch we drove up Mt St. Helens to an observatory area where we spent some time enjoying the view, reviewing the history of the mountain top blowing off and generally trying not to get blown off the mountain ourselves. It was very windy. As we were leaving the park we talked a bit to the rangers and found out that we were there on the very last day of the season. They were closing the doors behind us and not letting anyone back in for 6 months. Wow, again good timing.
We traveled down the road and went to dinner at a gambling casino. None of us were real gamblers but it’s still entertaining to see the hundreds of people who have his gambling mania and sit in front of video poker games for hours and hours… nice dinner!
We said our goodbyes and headed our separate ways. It was fun and good to see my brother and his wife again.
The next morning was open as our flight back to Chicago wasn’t leaving until late afternoon. We drove back up to Seattle and cruised along the Puget Sound in the industrial side of Seattle for a bit. When we turned around we got back on a main road and decided to just get off in downtown Seattle to check things out. It was very busy and there was no parking available for quite a ways but we eventually found a spot. We got out the car and walked down to the pier where we saw some huge ships coming in – apparently from Canada. When the ships would dock, huge crowds of people would converge on the downtown Seattle area. But on the way, many of them were stopping at this one seaside restaurant. We went and took a look. “Ivar’s” is the name of the place and you could stand in line and get some terrific looking and smelling seafood or you could go into the sit-down restaurant. We went inside and found a beautiful place that has been there since the 30’s and had huge picture windows looking out on the water. Beautiful!
For the 5th time in 5 days we had some terrific clam chowder and fish fry. It was gooooood! Afterward, we walked along the wharf where the seagulls were swarming around trying to get hand outs from the hundreds of people enjoying their lunch outside.
We made it back to the airport with plenty of time to spare. We could have jumped onto the packed flight leaving before ours, but I decided to just wait. Maybe I’m just a bit superstitious. As our appointed departure time approached I noticed there was hardly anyone else around. They called up the super stupendous platinum special premiere boarding class, then the double platinum boarding class, then the double gold with cheese boarding class. Then they called for everyone else. Turns out there were only 13 people on the whole plane heading back to Chicago from Seattle on that Saturday afternoon. We were in the cheap seats but we could sit anywhere we wanted (behind first class) and got treated like royalty. Lots of free food and snacks and beverages and more snacks and “Did you want to take any of these home?” snacks. Burp!
A couple days later the POD arrived at our Des Plaines home. As the POD driver maneuvered the POD into place next to the garage I noticed a little bulge in the sliding door of the POD. Right around the height of an Elan front bumper. When the driver had his back turned I gave a little push onto the sliding door bulge and I could feel the Elan inside the POD roll away from the door and then roll back. Oh, oh! Turned out that one of the tie down straps had come loose and the car was rolling around inside the POD. No real damage. The paint was already stripped off the front bumper so what’s a few scratches?
I unpacked project Elan #10 and moved it all up to our Lakehouse basement and thought to myself: “This has got to be one of the last Elan projects left in the world” – right? Well, I was wrong and I will tell you about it in a future Lotus Notus or two. Or three…
