Day 6, DONT EAT THAT

Today was a memorable day for us. We did some sightseeing as we passed through Redmond, up towards Seattle and then over to Mount Rainier. Redmond is a small town outside Seattle. I had a chance to live there with my sister, Julie for a few months. It was beautiful. I was noticing all the gorgeous vegetation, the variation in the countryside and I couldn’t get enough of the cool clean air.

In reading about the Seattle area, we knew that seatbelt laws were quite strict. We were able to verify this knowledge just as we pulled on the freeway from Redmond. We were pulled over on the ON RAMP. I thought the friendly looking officer was going to tell us a bridge was out or something, but the tone in his voice made me ask if we had done anything wrong. Seatbelts. The officer couldn’t see a shoulder strap belt and pulled us over. After we explained that the RV was only equipped with lap belts and that we had our infant in a car seat, he let us go with a warning. Warning? Warning for what? That we will be pulled over again for not having shoulder straps? We drove off and I began to notice the rain stained brick walls, the old buildings, the heavy traffic. Suddenly, Redmond didn’t seem like such a beautiful place. It was as if the angels stopped singing, birds fell from the sky and someone just told me I had grey hair. Even though Redmond really was just as beautiful and the officer was very nice, a negative experience sure influenced how I felt about the place. It made me think, how often do the words I say or actions I do influence those around me? My children? Do they start out having a beautiful day and I come in like a cop and put a damper on everything. Food for thought… now speaking of food.

We have been told that Seattle seafood is the best anywhere, so we began to look for a child friendly place we could take the kids and enjoy a little comida de la mar. We found a place called Imperial Garden Seafood. We assumed we had struck gold… seafood and Chinese food. YIKES! Were we ever wrong! We had barely warmed our seats before we were ambushed by three non-English speaking servers with carts full of food, none of which I recognized. They just began putting food in front of us, “yes?” I would nod or shrug and there it was on our table. Every once and a while, I would hear a word I thought I knew, like Moo- Shoo… That stuff is delicious back home, so of course I nodded. What they put on my table looked like the intestines of an unidentified animal. Our new friends were gone as quickly as they had appeared, leaving a mound of mysterious food before us. We all looked at each other with wide eyes, trying to stifle our laughter. What had we gotten ourselves into?
None of the meat was in whole pieces, making me think they just ground everything up. R and S both wouldn’t touch anything, so I asked if they had chicken. “no chicken, only pork” Great! Please pass the pig! It looked tasty enough, so I encouraged my seafood shy boys to dig in and I also took an energetic bite. BONES! What part of the pig do you serve that has bones????? The feet? Knees? Jawbone? I couldn’t think of anything that had the bones that I would want to eat. I had to spit that one out, and then the gurgling stomach began. We opted for one last option, in hopes to find some food the kids would eat. Chicken Chow mien – evidently they did have chicken somewhere in the kitchen. Well, it wasn’t horrible, but instead of what we would think was chicken, there was this egg stuff. It was like they got the right animal, just the wrong delivery of it. If there was actual meat in those, it couldn’t be healthy. So, in the end, we all left our cultural experience with no desire to ever return. We ransacked the RV for something that would extinguish the taste and stop the oncoming stomach upset. The unpleasant food outweighed any sense of adventure we had experienced upon entering the restaurant. EWWWW!

The rest of the day was amazing as we traveled through the vivid scenery of Mount Rainier National Park. It was breathtaking. There was still snow on the mountain and on the sides of the roads. The melt off was creating spontaneous waterfalls every few yards. The plant life had greened up and was striking against the snow. Rivers and streams ran along every road we took. I just kept thinking, “This is supposed to be the Telestial World??? The LEAST beautiful???” The pictures I have taken don’t even do justice to what we saw. But hopefully you can get the idea.