Chapter 35 – Seattle Bound
After leaving the ranch, Ginny drove seven hours to Missoula and circled downtown a while before finding a spot to park for the night by the Clark Fork River. Missoula was a pleasant town of about sixty thousand with a few interesting old buildings, but not many sights that she felt a need to stay in town for. The next morning she took a slight detour to the outskirts of town to see historic Fort Missoula. The history was interesting, but other than the old train cars, there wasn't much to interest the kids. After a couple hours, she continued on her previous route. The real beauty and sights to behold of Montana were in its plains and forests, which she wove through as she drove out of Missoula and approached Idaho.
After a couple of more hours on the road, Ginny stopped at a viewpoint over Lake Couer d'Alene and prepared lunch for her and the kids. After, they looked around the resort town for a bit and then continued to the destination of the day, Spokane, Washington. She had done more planning while back at the ranch and had reservations at an RV park in the north part of the city, along the Spokane river. With the stops throughout the day, they arrived shortly before six. The kids were all hungry and tired and she made a simple dinner and put them to bed early. Not long after the kids were settled, she received a phone call from Dean and answered happily.
"Hi Dean. How's the house? Getting your to-do list done?"
"The house is great Gin. It's nice to be able to put our own stamp on a place, paint, decorate, that sort of thing. In fact, we've got it almost done and Ken and I've made another big decision. We've decided that there's no reason to wait on formalizing our bond as much as we can. We love each other and have privately committed to spending our lives together. Now we want to make the commitment public. Since the house is almost ready, we're going to have our ceremony and party here. We've invited our families and I want you and the kids here as well. Don't worry, the only people coming from England will be non-magicals. I talk to some of the guys on occasion, but I'm not as close with any of them as I am with you. We plan on maybe forty people. The date we picked is just over two weeks. Can you floo with the baby, or do you still prefer the muggle way? If so, I'll send you tickets. Please tell me you'll come."
"Of course I will Dean. I'm thrilled for both of you. While babies are clear for floo travel at one month, long distance floos are normally in central offices and I don't want to be near any central magic offices. That's why I opt for airplanes. And don't worry about the tickets, I can cover them. As I told you before, I planned on visiting Seattle and I'm almost halfway there. I'm in Spokane in eastern Washington now. We'll spend a couple of days here and then I'll drive to Seattle. I'll have plenty of time to see the city and then fly to Hawaii. I'm excited to see your place and I miss you."
"I miss you too Ginny. I'll give Ken the good news. You may have to make an island hop from Honolulu to Kahului after you fly in from Seattle. I know it will be a long day, but you'll have plenty of chance to relax once you're here."
Ginny and Dean talked for a couple of more minutes before saying goodnight. Ginny then spent a while looking over her tourist guide for Spokane and planning the next couple of days. She fed Wyatt one more time and then called it a night as well.
The next day Ginny and the kids grabbed a bus into downtown Spokane. This was her first major day out with three kids, but she managed well with Amaia and Wyatt in the stroller and Seb walking with her. She had been practicing with him and he knew to keep hold of the looped handle she had attached to the side of the stroller for him. After looking around downtown, they ended up at Riverfront Park. The first thing to grab Seb's attention was the train, so they started there. The ride was about a half hour and gave a good bit of history for Ginny, while keeping both the older kids happy. After, they grabbed lunch and ate it while watching the falls. With lunch complete, their next stop was the carousel and then finally the IMAX theater for a movie on coral reefs. The huge screen was amazing and Ginny found herself as enthralled as the kids. Once the movie wrapped, the day had been long and it was time to return to the RV park.
Ginny and the kids stayed in Spokane one more day. Using Spokane Transit, she toured a couple of historic neighborhoods, including Browne's Addition. In the afternoon, she took the kids to the arboretum to run and play while she took in the fall foliage and last blooms of the season. The next day they pulled out of Spokane and pointed west once again.
The drive across Washington state was an interesting mix of landscapes, from scrubby high desert to fields of grain and orchards that stretched to the horizon, the drive across the state was long but interesting. As she drove, she alternated between playing music and talking to the kids. The couch with seatbelts was behind the driver's seat and she had a couple of mirrors positioned to watch them. Across from the couch was a large picture window that offered them a view of at least one side of the road. They had a few small toys nearby to keep their hands busy, but she also made sure to point out interesting sights on the way.
Halfway to Seattle, she took a break in the city of Ellensburg, where Brett's last rodeo was. He had mentioned the town with fondness and she decided to make it their lunch stop. The town was a good sized farming community and she found a nice park on the Yakima river with a playground for the kids. After a bit of exercise and lunch, she gathered the kids, loaded up, and began the gradual ascent into the Cascade mountains.
The drive from Spokane to Seattle with a couple of stops in between took nearly eight hours. The RV park that Ginny had selected was south of the city near SeaTac airport. It wasn't the most scenic, but it was as close as she could get to the city. That night after the kids went to bed, she called to book tickets to Hawaii in eleven days. She was pleased when she found that she could get a flight with only one stopover in San Francisco. She was also pleasantly surprised when she found that she had enough airline points for one of her three tickets. With her tickets purchased, she looked forward to seeing the tropical paradise that Dean now called home.
The next day Ginny made her first foray into the city using buses. It took nearly two hours and three bus changes to get into the center of the city and she knew that she would need another alternative since she planned to stay for a while. Putting aside that worry temporarily, she decided to enjoy the unusually sunny late September day. Deciding to start with the obvious tourist central destination, she found herself at Seattle Center and took the advice of the bus driver to get up to the top of the Space Needle while the weather was good and the mountain was out. The mountain in this case was Mount Rainier, although she could see both the Cascade and Olympic ranges from the amazing views. She had heard that Seattle was rainy, but on this day it was truly breathtaking.
Once they descended from the Needle, they walked the Center and came across an unusual tour. The Ride the Ducks tour was about to start and Ginny decided on a spur of the moment to take the unique tour. It ended up being a fantastic decision as she got a good introduction to the city in just ninety minutes. When the tour duck left the road and turned into a boat to tour Lake Union, the kids went wild with excitement. At the end of the tour they were back at the Center and looking for lunch. After perusing several food trucks, she decided on something unique called a piroshky. It was a Russian meat and cheese pie in a light crust and it was absolutely delicious. One filled her up quite well and Seb alone managed three quarters of one. They toured around the center a bit longer before finding a quiet spot to rest. For their final stop of the day, they went to the Experience Music Project. While it had similarities to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, EMP focused on the influence of Seattle music. It also had a number interactive exhibits for the kids. At the end of the day they endured the long bus rides back to the park and she resolved to figure out better transportation.
The following day Ginny decided to stay at the park and relax. The kids had a nice playground to play on and, while the pool was closed for the season, the large hot tub remained open and Ginny and the kids all enjoyed it. At a couple of points during the day Ginny also worked with Seb on his lessons. He was now preschool age and she was making his lessons more deliberate, although she still tried to keep them fun. She also started to talk about magic more with him and even let him wave her wand a few times. The most he ever did was blow some papers off the table, but it was good for him to start to feel his magic. She wished he could ride his toy broom, but there was nowhere private enough.
On her third day in the city, Ginny decided on a solution to the bus problem. Since the RV park was near the airport, there was a car rental agency that had a secondary lot just a block away. Ginny reviewed their rates and policies and then talked to the woman behind the counter. Since she planned on renting a car on a repeated daily basis, she opted to fill out the paperwork to join the frequent customer club. Along with granting her points for the future, it meant she only had go through the security and ID check during the initial setup. One problem she had was that Jen Jacobs was older than her, but was still not quite 23 and the agency would not rent to anyone under 25. Although she didn't like doing it, a quick confundus under the counter caused the agent to miss that detail. The cost wasn't cheap, especially since she needed a larger car that could fit two car seats, a booster seat and a double stroller in the trunk, but it was worth it. For forty-three dollars a day, she had the freedom to get out and explore the city. After getting the car, Ginny made her first stop Pioneer Square and then later went to Gasworks Park.
As she was touring downtown, Ginny noticed a number of tattoo parlors and decided it was time to get Wyatt's name added to her arm. She also had another tattoo idea, but she wanted to find a good artist who could manage it. She talked to several people with nice looking ink and a couple recommended the same place, so she made her decision and stopped there after being in Seattle for a few days. There were four artists in the shop and she looked through all their portfolios before deciding. The artist she selected was a woman named Bree and Ginny felt immediately at ease with her. Adding Wyatt's name and extending the connecting cherry blossom vines to tie it to the rest of her tattoo was straightforward and only took about an hour. The next tattoo would take a bit longer and Bree took all the reference material she had brought and made an appointment for Ginny to return in a couple of days after she had worked on the design.
Ginny wanted a way to permanently place a reminder of her travels on herself and had decided to complement the scattering of cherry blossoms that were looped with her kids names by adding flowers to her other arm. She started with a traditional English rose, then a vine looped to an iris for France, then a carnation for Monaco, a lily for Italy, an edelweiss for Switzerland, then a red carnation for Spain, a Venezuelan orchid, a ceibo for Argentina (which Bree had never seen or heard of), a cornflower for Germany, a yellow daisy for Denmark, then purple heather for Norway, and finally (for now) a maple leaf for Canada. The one country she omitted from the main vine was the US. Having visited so many states, she decided that she needed to include the state flowers for all of the thirty states she had seen so far, and added one for Hawaii, since she planned on being there soon. The vine of state flowers wove around and in between the vine of country flowers, with the state flowers being half again smaller. The vines started at the top of her shoulder and wound around her arm in a tight spiral. When complete, the work took four hours and extended to her elbow. Bree joked that if Ginny kept traveling like she had been, she was going to finish a full sleeve and need to start on a leg. While the work was being done, the kids played in a corner of the shop and Bree was amazed when Ginny even managed to nurse at one point while she was being inked. While it was a long and painful process, the end result was gorgeous. Shortly before Ginny left the city, and after she'd had a few days to heal, she returned so that Bree could take pictures for her portfolio.
While Ginny was in the shop for the pictures, a group of women about her age were in for piercings and Ginny was fascinated by the how many different parts of the body could be pierced. After talking for a while, she decided to take the plunge and went with a safe nose piercing, choosing a small star. When she looked in the mirror, she had to admit that it was cute.
Over the next week, Ginny and the kids settled into a routine. They would spend a day out exploring and then would return the car at the end of the day. The next day would be a relax day and then they would explore again the following day. Soon October arrived and with it came the dreary drizzle that Seattle was known for. On the first weekend of October, Ginny got her car and headed east of the city at the recommendation of a couple from the park. A half hour down I-90, she arrived in the town of Issaquah for their famous Salmon Days festival. The event was massive, covering all of the old town center. The event was the celebration of the return of the salmon to the local fish hatchery to spawn and the kids were fascinated watching the large fish swim upstream. After seeing the reason for the celebration, most of the rest of the day was spent touring the many vendors and participating in the free activities offered for the kids at Veterans' Park. By the time they left in the mid-afternoon, the kids were coming down from a sugar high brought on by ice cream sundaes and were ready to crash in the car.
Since they still had a couple of hours of daylight, Ginny continued down the road another twenty minutes to the farming community of North Bend and then drove to the neighboring town of Snoqualmie. Her ultimate destination was the famous Snoqualmie Falls. While not as impressive as Niagara falls, the view was still breathtaking with the Salish Lodge perched just above the falls. She had the younger kids in the stroller and Seb on her side as usual as they circled the observation deck to look at the falls and feel the spray from the water. One side of the deck had stairs leading down to a perilous looking trail that led down to the base of the falls. Ginny took one look and decided she was fine with staying on the observation deck. As she looked down at the trail, she noticed two groups passing each other carefully along the narrow trail. Suddenly a boy who looked to be about fourteen and was near the edge started to slip. Ginny always kept her wand it's disillusioned holster when she was out in large crowds and she reacted on instinct. She cast a near silent wingardium leviosa with a bit of an accio flick that floated him up and propped him back on the trail. To cover herself, she immediately then cast a lumos projectum that sent a flash of light to a point near the two groups. Hoping the light would be a distraction, she quickly turned and walked away once she saw the boy was alright. The observation deck had an additional half dozen people around, but no one seemed to realize what she had just done. Shaking a bit at the possibility of being caught, Ginny quickly took hold of Seb and the stroller and returned to the car.
Ginny had two more days to explore Seattle and she spent one day catching a ferry across Puget Sound to the town of Bremerton. Then their last day was spent at the Woodland Park Zoo, when they were once again blessed with clear weather. The morning of their day at the zoo, Ginny splurged and took the kids out for pancakes at IHOP. While at the restaurant, she glanced through a discarded newspaper and had to smile at an article on the second page detailing how a teenager had been spared a nasty fall at Snoqualmie Falls by the work of an angel. Several witnesses reported the bright light and the boy reported a floating feeling. Ginny suppressed a laugh, she was definitely no angel, but she was glad the boy was alright.
Eleven days after arriving in Seattle, it was time to leave. The time spent in the beautiful city had been good for Ginny and her small family. Rather than being on the go every day, the alternating days off had been welcome and she resolved to make that part of her routine whenever possible. Now that she had three small children, she needed to take time with each of them and savor the moments even more.
On the day of her departure, Ginny left the RV park and drove a short distance to a storage facility. Once again she felt a bit sad leaving her RV behind, but she was looking forward to Hawaiian warmth. Packing for the trip the previous day had also been a challenge. She no longer traveled light and found it difficult to decide on what was most necessary to take along. From the storage facility, she and the kids took a shuttle to the airport and were soon on their way across the Pacific.