Bellingham to Centralia

We began the first leg of our journey late Friday night - after a long day of packing and cleaning we finally left Bellingham at about 11:30 pm! Our first stop was just down I-5 in Centralia where my mom, Pati lives.

I (Travis) tried to be a manly-man and assure Mary that even though I was very tired from a long day and a long week that I would be fine with driving a few hours (the drive from Bellingham to Centralia is only about 3 hours)... but I only made it about a half-hour before I was battling with my eyes and had to turn the driver seat over to Mary! :)

Mary drove the rest of the way with some help from her good ol' friend, the 16 oz. Red Bull! haha I can take a little bit of credit though - after a tiny little cat nap I turned into quite a chatty kathy and helped keep Mary awake.

We got into Centralia at about 3:00 am and got to talk to mom and Taylor for a little bit (never wake a 2 year-old up at 3 in the morning though...sorry mom...).

Since we've been in Centralia we've been running around quite a bit! We spent most of Saturday down in Kelso for Amaya's birthday party (for those that don't know, Amaya is Travis's cousin Mindy's daugter and she just celebrated her 5th birthday). We also had the chance to visit with Travis's high school cross country coach, Joe Stewart, and some other family from the area.

When we got back into Centralia later on Saturday night we went to McMenemins and ate some delicious food and watched Man of Steel (if you haven't seen it - stop reading and go see it right now...).

Sunday we caught up on our sleep a little but then we spent most of the day at the Southwestern Washington Fair which was a blast! We ate loads of fair food, gawked at animals like horses, goats, sheep, cows, ducks, and cats (they show cats at fairs?), played a couple of fair games, and, probably best of all, we played in these massive plastic balls that are filled with air! They let them loose in this pool of water and put you in them to let you run around like hamsters or something! [Pictures coming soon...]

We rounded out Sunday night by going to the Lucky Eagle Casino and losing some more of mom's money... (the "more" is referencing back to our trip to Reno last summer - ask us sometime and we can tell you about that if you are curious). We have concluded at this point that neither Mary nor I are very lucky in casinos. Our hypothesis is that we were so lucky to have found each other that we used up all of our luck ;)

For our last day in Centralia we are laying low. My sister, Jenna, is coming up to spend the afternoon/evening with us before we hit the road East. Mom is preparing a feast of steak, corn on the cob, baked potatoes, cucumber delicious-ness, and bloody marys with all the works! Needless to say we are pretty excited! I think we will also be playing some board games - at which point my over-competitive side will kick in and I will win all the games! muah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!!! ("or be super crabby if you don't" - Mary Peters)

Up next in our journey is a trip to Coulee Dam where Mary's Grammie lives! We are celebrating Mary's 22nd birthday there before heading to Spokane!

Until next time...