5th Anniversary: Tacoma

This year was quite different than any other anniversary. For one, we were not sure of where to go until a couple of days before the special date and secondly, I only had two days off from work. We were definitely not going to stay in town for our anniversary, that would be lame. We had to do something different, something we had never done before. One of our best idea was to visit Vantage, the Saturday after our anniversary for the annual reliability run, however, that would mean spending the night at Ellensburg or Moses Lake. But really, on my anniversary? I like eastern Washington but not that much. So where could we go?

After much thinking, we finally decided to visit the LeMay Auto Museum in Tacoma. Seattle is 4 hours from home so we packed up the Jeep and headed west early Friday morning. The drive was sunny until we arrived at Snoqualmie Pass where the clouds were creeping over the summit and dissipating almost immediately. It felt great to be in a cloudy and green climate once again after spending plenty of sunny and hot days in Walla Walla. Anyhow, we arrived in Belleve and met up with our friend Ben Blood and after eating veggie burgers from Burger King we headed south to Tacoma. On our drive we mentioned to Mr. Blood that we were celebrating our anniversary and perhaps he could take a couple of snapshots of us. It's always difficult to ask a photographer to take pictures since that's his profession yet he was kind enough to take more than just a few shots. It's nice to hand over the camera to someone and not have to explain how to use it or have to place it on a tripod and run back.

After walking around and taking pictures around Tacoma, we headed towards the much awaited LeMay Museum. They currently have an exhibition on corvettes and although corvettes are for men during midlife crisis, they actually had some pretty neat and rare models. The museum is very well set up with plenty of information on the walls and facts about rare vehicles. I got to see a Tucker for the first time and a 1923 Buick model 35. The museum is 4 stories and packed so that meant a lot of walking. On the third floor the museum has set up a slot car racetrack and for the cost 6 bucks Mr. Blood and I raced around the track. Notice how my blue Camaro unleashes the nitrous to defeat Mr. Blood.... hmmm... yeah, turns out that was the first lap. Although I won't mention the rest of the laps I will mention that after visiting the museum we went to Hello Cupcakes to enjoy some delicious and nutritious cupcakes, or was that just delicious? I forget. I have heard that a man can not live on cupcakes alone, what's that all about? So we headed to the Spaghetti factory where Traci got the Manager's Special (Mizithra and Brown butter with Marinara) and I got Cheese Ravioli's. Ben is still not interested in solid foods so he took a nap. We rented a condo near the Space Needle for the night and after getting all settled in, it seemed rather adult behavior to call it a night at 10pm. Hey, this is our anniversary. So we bundled up Ben and walked around the Seattle Center for a couple of hours.

Saturday seemed quite short of a day, we visited the Ballard Church and ate some delicious lunch with our friend Mr. Blood. We drove to Discovery Park after our meal and enjoyed a nice walk around the park. Traci had mentioned that she would have liked to visit Trophy Cupcakes on this trip so we made sure to stop in Bellevue before heading out. It was a bit after 6pm by the time we left Seattle and just having done that trip the previous day meant I was wasted on the drive back. Ben had a difficult time after Ellensburg but slept well once we passed the Columbia River around Handford.

It's amazing to think that it's been five years since Traci and I got married. Marriage has been great! I have been tremendously blessed to have Traci in my life. She likes cupcakes, likes cars and is supporting when I want to take a walk around the Space Needle around midnight. She's amazing. She's my wife.