Day 8 and 9 – Thadeus and More Things that Go Bump in the Night

This morning, after watching the sunrise over the four mountain peaks, and spying on dozens of sleeping bumble bees, I set out to pick up Thadeus.

Landing at Thadeus’ place for a few hours allowed me to get some laundry done. We chatted over coffee while he packed and the laundry finished, and by 1030, we were on the road. He is a night shifter so the plan was for him to sleep while I drove, but we ended up talking nearly the entire six hour drive to northern Washington. Not long after we arrived, he crashed!

I woke up in the middle of the night and found a package on the floor that I had never seen before. I assumed that it was something Thadeus had brought and just not seen earlier so I put it in his drawer and went back to sleep. When morning came around I mentioned it to him and he had no idea what I was talking about. I dug it out and discovered that it was an open bottle of generic chocolate syrup wrapped in two plastic bags. Neither of us have any idea how it ended up in our van overnight.

After not being able to solve the mysterious appearance of the chocolate syrup, we decided to take a short hike. Our campsite was fairly secluded, while at the same time it was only about a ten minute walk to the river.

Thad’s haircut is a far cry from what it was the last time I saw him. He told me that he hadn’t had one since before the COVID lockdown. His wife is out of town, but he says he is getting cleaned up before she returns in a week so we shall see!

Our next destination was about 90 minutes away so we took our time and decided to stop at a local dinner/bar type place for lunch. We ended up having the best salads ever! Thad’s had balsamic drizzled beets and candied pecans. Not bad for a place where you would normally expect to find two or three variations on chicken fingers and a burger or two. The menu actually had several really great sounding options.

Upon arriving to Camano Island we discovered a neat little business area that housed the local library, as well as a number of area businesses including a yoga and wellness studio! We grabbed lattes and walked around a bit before heading on to the state park to find our camping spot.

Once we set up camp, I pulled out my new backgammon set and taught the boy how to play. He then proceeded to kick my butt a few times… clearly that didn’t go quite as planned.

After that we decided to take a walk. We were pretty close to the beach so we went down and enjoyed watching several eagles hunting for dinner. At one point they honed in on a couple of small dogs, but the presence of people seemed to keep them from actually diving in although they did get within 30 feet while checking them out.

The eagles would swoop down to the edge of the water and then take off to the trees behind us. On one of the trips back to the trees a tail feather fell through the air. I was taking pictures, but managed to miss catching the floating feather.