A GREAT VACATION...

We got back home on Sunday evening from an absolutely fabulous vacation. What more could we ask for, a couple of great cities, the sea, fun family and friends and more than enough fantastic food.

The first several hours of our trip was spent in Las Vegas...just because it was sorta on the way. This time we stayed just one night and in the downtown area on Fremont street.

This was the view from our hotel room in Vegas.

We left Vegas on Saturday morning and headed to Bellingham, Washington.

I was more than a little worried about the runway being long enough for our plane as we were descending toward the Bellingham International Airport.

But, alas, we survived the landing and Andrew's Aunt Stacy and Uncle Joe were kind enough to pick us up and take us the short drive to Lummi Island to Andrew's parent's house.

Here we are on the ferry on our way to the island.

Here's Randy and Laura's beautiful home on Lummi Island.

And the view from their living room window during sunset one evening.

One of the highlights of our trip was the day cruise to Victoria, B.C. We left from the Bellingham harbor on Tuesday morning and set off on the three hour ferry ride, cruising through the San Juan Islands to Victoria. Our ferry is the one with the yellow roof.

Here's where we crossed the International boundary between the U.S. and Canada. If you look closely, you can actually see the dotted line they painted on top of the water that marks the boundary.

...And here's the view that met us as we entered the Port of Victoria. The beautiful Empress Hotel.

And this is a view of the harbor that we arrived at.

We had a great lunch at a nice little place right on the harbor then we made the several block trek to Craigdarroch Castle. (check out the link for a Flickr page of great photos)For some history on Craigdarroch click here.Here's a picture I took from the top floor of the touret looking out.

The 3 hour trip back to Bellingham seemed like minutes due to the wonderful buffet dinner that was prepared and served to us on the boat. Here's Andrew and his Mom, Laura in line at the buffet.

Shortly after dinner our captain spotted a pod of Orca whales in the distance. He slowed the boat and cut the engines and we all watched for about 20 minutes as the whales made their way past.The pictures never do justice to how awesome it is to whale-watch.(yeah, I know. the date is screwed up on my camera)

Andrew and I spent a few days hanging out in Seattle as well. We've always wanted to do the underground tour of Seattle so we took this opportunity to go.Here's a picture from underground, looking up through one of the many "skylights" that is actually cut into the sidewalks above. Kinda creepy, huh?

Since we were in Seattle, how could we pass up the opportunity to meet up with and have a relaxing Saturday brunch with Matt and his partner Scott? Two of our favorite blog friends! What a couple of great guys! They took us to a great little restaurant called The Five Spot in the Queen Anne Hill neighborhood of Seattle. We had such a great time visiting, we didn't want to leave. After we left the restaurant Scott and Matt showed us where to get some amazing pictures of Seattle from high up on the hill. Here are the four of us posing for our waiter.To prove we really were in Seattle, here we are with the Space Needle in the background.

As you can see, we really packed a lot into this vacation. The 10 days just seemed to fly by in an instant.
Now the planning starts for the next trip...anyone have any suggestions on where to go next?