Day 2 - Page 2

Spirit of Washington - Dinner Train

Well as it turned out, DeAnne's parents, Clarice and Gil, did not arrive at the hotel until about 4:00 pm that afternoon. That would have been fine except we had previously made a dinner reservation on the Spirit of Washington train ride. So they hardly had time to grab a quick nap and we were off to our train ride dinner.

What can I say about the Spirit of Washington? Well, it was interesting but we sat in a dome car, for which you pay a little extra and thinking we'd have a great ride and view. The only problem was that it seemed like we were seated on a wooden box with cushions. If you're more than 2' tall it is really cramped. The tables were small and I felt claustrophobic, so being the humble, short, fat, bald guy that I am I was pretty cramped when we arrived at our destination.







This picture on the left is of the whole gang just before we departed. My father-in-law, Gil on the left, my wife, DeAnne in the middle and her mother Clarice on the right.









So what was our destination? It was the Columbia Winery which was founded in 1962 by ten friends, six of whom were University of Washington professors. Below are a few pictures I took when we were there.

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The winery was right near the train tracks. This is us arriving at the winery. The train turned around while we were inside.




These are two pictures I took while inside. They show the kegs the wine is stored in for aging.







This last picture is of us at the wine tasting section. They have a very nice gift shop in the other room that my wife pointing at.






Well folks, that's all for day two. From here we took the train ride back, went back to our hotel and passed out from exhaustion.

NOTE: If you're thinking of making reservations to take the Spirit of Washington train ride, I'm sorry to inform you that as of October 29, 2007 it has ceased its operations. Sorry.

Ok, tune in tomorrow for more fun filled adventure of our trip to Seattle. Tomorrow, we take the ferry to the Olympia Mountain range and eventually on to Victoria, B.C. Canada to the famous Buchart Gardens.