Hayley's Graduation Trip

 I was lucky enough to be invited to Hayley's graduation trip to the Northwest.  Her dream was to go to Oregon to the biggest bookstore in the United States.  I was excited to be invited along for a couple of reasons.  First, the chance to be with Hayley and become a little more acquainted with my granddaughter and I also love the Northwest.  There will always be a place in my heart for Seattle, Washington.  I was born there and raised there until I turned 8 years old.  It is always like going home.

Our trip began at the new Salt Lake Airport.  We were there in plenty of time, even with the long lines to go through security.  I breezed through without a problem, gathered my suitcase and waited for Lynda Ann and Hayley who I thought were right behind me.  After waiting for a very long time, I got a text from Annie telling me that security would not let Hayley through with her pictured learners permit.  They pulled them aside and told them they would have to wait for the person in charge to let them through.  The time was ticking away and we became more and more nervous about missing our plane.  Annie mentioned to the lady that we were going to miss our plane and she basically told Annie that she didn't care.  That wasn't her problem nor her concern.  Needless to say, that did not make Annie very happy.  Finally, the person in charge came and asked Annie if she had anything with Hayley's name on it.  Annie had her insurance card, produced that and the security guy let them through.  They also went through all of Hayley's luggage which slowed us even more.  By the time Annie and Hayley got to me we literally had 5 minutes before the gate would close and we would miss our flight.  To top it off, the gate we needed to be to was B11.  Have you been to the new airport?  Do you know how incredibly far away the B gates are from security?  There was absolutely no way we would make that flight.  But, we didn't give up.  We grabbed our luggage and literally ran through the airport.  I've never been that exhausted or stressed.  By the time we got to gate B11 we saw that they had not started loading.  I don't know what the delay was but I felt like we had some help from above.  We made our flight!  

We landed in Seattle, rented a car and our trip officially began.  Our first stop was Pike Market.  It was almost sad to see so many different venues closed, but we still had fun wandering through the market and even bought a few things.  When we got to the doughnut vendor she had one bag left of 6 doughnuts.  We bought them.

From there we headed to the Elliott Bay Book Company on Broadway of downtown Seattle.  This was one of the places that Hayley was anxious to visit.  We spent some time wandering through the bookstore and also experienced downtown Seattle with all the homeless issues.

From there we headed to the Fremont, Seattle and found the troll that was in the movie 10 Things I Hate About You.  I've never seen the movie but might have to watch it after seeing this crazy troll underneath the overpass.  Actually, kind of creepy.

It didn't take me too long to decide that I'd had enough of this creepy statue.  We did notice lots of people driving up and wanting to take pictures.  I was happy to let them at it.  

From there we went drove to Bellevue to see the Seattle Temple.  It is beautiful and so peaceful walking the grounds and taking lots of pictures.  I love to see the temples.

The grounds were gorgeous and trees and flowers in full bloom.  What a beautiful setting.

Me, being silly.

The day was fast coming to a close and we had done a lot in one day.  We were getting hungry so found a place called Lil Jons and had dinner and then to the hotel to settle in for the night.

As we were leaving the restaurant we notice a Deseret Book across the parking lot.  We wanted to go in but they were closed.  I saw this saying in the window and fell in love with it.  I'm sure I can find it here.

That pretty much sums up our first amazing day.