Okay, the title is a bit of a cheat, as this trip extended into May. A week after I got back from my solo long weekend jaunt, Mr. K and I did another whirlwind concert and family trip, this time with more whirl.

The driving force for this trip was seeing Thank You Scientist in Portland and Seattle. We didn’t want to have to drive all the way to Portland the same day as that show, so we left a day early and got almost to the Oregon border before grabbing a hotel room and taking a nice overnight rest. The next day, we drove along the Columbia River Gorge but did not really stop to admire the views even though Mount Hood was out (I did stop for that, briefly, but it didn’t show up in my photos, what with it looking like just another cloud, albeit a pointy one). Instead we stopped for a nice long lunch at a Mexican restaurant. Made it Portland in the late afternoon, checked into our hotel, made our way to the neighborhood where the concert was and drove around for a while before finding parking. The theater our show was in wasn’t quite as interesting to look at as this other one we passed on our walk to the show:

We had to leave town the next day fairly early (for us) in order to make our plans in Seattle, but fortunately the place purported to have the best pie in Oregon (Random Order Pie, per the list that’s yet to steer us wrong) was open for breakfast, so we stopped there for quiche and pie on our way out of town. Traffic was only mildly bad on our drive up to Seattle, so we were able to follow our plan of parking near the concert venue, taking the train to the baseball stadium, see the Cubs play the Mariners (Cubs won, big), take the train back, arrive at the concert during the first opening band, see Thank You Scientist play again (much looser, fun show this time), then make our way out of the center city to crash at a hotel.
 

After a nice rest overnight, we drove north to visit with Mr. K’s mom, left her to go to a birthday dinner with his sister and a friend of hers who became a friend of ours, then went back to visit more with his mom. The art below was on the wall of the bathroom at the restaurant; I thought it was an interesting use for old 45s.

 
The next day we drove home so Mr. K could make his weekend kayaking outing. I snapped the photo below at a highway rest area; I think I’ve peed there before but I sure didn’t remember ever walking out behind the buildings to see this view.

I’ve now been home for over a week, with no plans to leave again for almost another week. It does sometimes feel like I’m rushing around too much, not taking time to really relax, but that’s what the early years of retirement are for: go while the going is good (and while the body will still allow it).