Turkey day in Seattle

Happy Thanksgiving Day from Seattle. We made it over Snoqualmie with no, I repeat, NO delay. The worst challenge we had to try to view all the fix-up activity (where the boulders had fallen) at 35 miles per hour, and that was at 12:30 p.m., three and one-half hours after the designated time where waits for travelers would supposedly range from two to eight hours.

And, we weren't the only brave rebels who disregarded the Washington governor's plea for folks to forget traveling over the mountains for the Thanksgiving holiday. The traffic was as heavy as we've seen it in the past. We think it was all a Democratic plot to keep commerce from the blue counties from spreading over to the red side of the Washington. We've heard such things have been known to happen before, and Washingtonians get mad.

By now, Annie's up and working in her apartment on Butterball. She has to get him all primped up and ready for stuffing before she comes to work here at the Marriott by 7 a.m. Then, Mom and Debbie will take over with the rest of the preliminaries to the big feast, expected to occur around 5 p.m. We'll have nine people in all, including a German student who's here in Seattle at a biological computation institute getting his Master's. That, by the way, computes into the fact that he's pretty smart, but Annie says he's a regular guy too.

Yesterday, after our pleasant surprise of rolling through what was supposed to be the nation's longest parking lot, we immediately experienced another unexpected delight---beautiful blue skies without a cloud. That was after driving through six hours of drop-dead UGLY. The Washington desert with fog and rain just ain't purty! So, the thrill of knowing the rest of the day would validate the words to the famous song, "The bluest skies you'll ever see are in Seattle," perked us up.

We checked into the hotel and a few minutes later, Annie came with a list of geocaches to pursue, all in the area around the University of Washington, including the beautiful arboretum. When you put Bill in an arboretum with a GPS, he has a difficult time focusing. After all, he's a tree man too, so Loblolly Love had to multitask as we searched out about five caches and stopped at approximately two dozen trees, just to ensure their labels were, indeed, correct.

While searching for "Another Mossy Bridge," a cache obviously located near another mossy bridge and well hidden in a tree, we bumped into Day Spring. He's a biker, geocacher, pilot who used to fly UPS shipments into Sandpoint every day back in the early 1990s. Now, he's a pilot for American Airlines out of San Francisco. We liked him cuz he remembered our red barn which sits not far from the Sandpoint runway where he landed.

He told us we needed to check out some of his "totally tubular" caches, which include a series of tasks to complete before the find. He went on his way, and we moved on to find two more caches, including one under a bridge to nowhere, under which people do live. Fortunately, nobody was home when we located the cache.

Annie wanted us to go find a cache near Nirvana singer Kurt Cobain's home, but by the time we got to that area, it was pretty dark. She also pointed across Lake Washington to all the lights of Bill Gates' home. Maybe we'll go back there today to see it in better light.

The day was topped off by a visit to Pasta Freska, not far from Annie's apartment and the hotel. Mike, the owner is Persian, Sicilian and Greek. Annie warned us beforehand that there's no menu. Instead, Mike comes with a bottle of red wine, pours each person a glass, then sits down and quizzes each person on what they absolutely do NOT like to eat.

Then, he makes sure, during the five course meal, followed by dessert, that nobody goes hungry and that everything is satisfactory to all palates. Since Annie doesn't care for seafood, she had beef with her pasta, while we had shrimp and salmon.

I'm not an eggplant person, but the eggplant parmesan for starters was delightful, as was the salad with goat cheese, the stuffed chicken with gravy which Annie swears she like to lick off the plate; the heavenly pasta, the main dish with pasta and the desserts, including two versions of spumoni ice cream, pumpkin cake, chocolate cake. A tasty liqueur topped off the dessert.

We all told Mike it was a lot better than McDonald's, and I've promised Mike that I'll tell my friends. So, if you're ever in Seattle, check it out at 1515 Westlake Avenue North. His email address is on his postcard: mike@pastafreska.com, so if you go there, tell him Marianne sent you.

Gotta get going. My coffee's turned lukewarm and Bill's about to head downstairs for the fitness center. Then, we'll go to breakfast. It should be a great day ahead; hope it is at your house too. Note to Jenny: Dakota Horse looks good. Note to the Lambs: I hope George calls today and that tomorrow I can tell my blog readers about a very special day in the life of the Lambs.

One final note to all: I've posted my current River Journal column on the website: www.mariannelove.com. If you want to read the column and the raw data about what some of our Sandpoint kids are doing, check it out. It's under "Love Notes --What in the World Are They Doing?"