Today was another moving day. The girls wanted to help us hitch and were having fun doing the very labor intensive work of pushing the button to retract the front jacks. Our destination was the Vasa Park Resort in Bellevue, Washington which is just 17 mile east of downtown Seattle. We were all very excited for this destination. Adam lived in Seattle for 3 months during the summer of '98 and I came out to visit him for a week. We had great memories of that time and couldn't wait to share those experiences with the kids. Seattle would also be a big milestone for the trip because it is the last destination before heading back east. Everyone was sad that meant vacation was coming to an end (even though the reality was another 34 days of fun still ahead of us). We pulled out of the RV park in Portland at 9:18 to start the 174 mile drive. With one stop for gas it took us about 3.5 hours.
Before arriving Adam was already concerned about getting into this campground and he thought there was a chance we wouldn’t be able to stay here. He had used Google street view while planning and it looked like a very tight turn through a narrow gate to enter. He had considered staying elsewhere but surprisingly there were very few campgrounds around Seattle and they were all booked when he made the reservations back in March.
Adam's concerns became a reality as the entrance to Vasa Park Resort came into view. We were perplexed by the gentleman manning the closed vehicle gate. They were having a private event and across the street was a parking lot filled with cars for their day guests. It was packed and there were lots of people crossing the street to enter through the pedestrian gate. It was a bit chaotic and no indication of what we should do as campground guests.
We stopped in the middle of the busy road to try and ask him how to get inside. When the gate attendant wasn’t responding to us Adam got the parking attendant’s attention to help. They were instructing us to pull into the lot across the street and make a u-turn to come across. Adam was very aggravated at this less than welcoming greeting and very confusing situation. Making a U-turn with a 50 foot rig is no easy task and this parking attendant, who was a young kid, likely had no clue what he was talking about.
Adam begrudgingly followed their instructions into the jam packed parking lot across the street. It was not immediately obvious where in this lot had ample room needed for us to turn around. The young parking attendant bore the brunt of Adam’s frustration. It took awhile for him to understand we could not easily go up and around the narrow rows of cars. Once he finally understood how much room we needed he assisted us to navigate to an area of the lot with enough room and we were able to carefully turn around. Now we were lined up for a straight entrance into the park. They opened the vehicle gate and stopped traffic so we could cross the busy road. Once inside the host helped guide us to our site.
This campground was located right on Lake Sammamish and their grounds were mostly used for corporate and personal parties. The park and amenities were very nice but the "camping" was very limited. In total they had less than 20 sites with some of those just for tent campers. Only 6 sites were full hook up for RVs. When we made this reservation in March the full hook up sites were booked for today but available for the rest of our stay. So for today we were given a site with water and 20 amp electricity (which meant we could use our lights and tv but would not be able to use the air conditioner). There was no sewer connection at this site but that was fine for one night. It was funny to see our rig in an area used primarily by tent campers. We would move tomorrow to a full hook up site.
While Adam was setting up camp I took the girls to the tables next to the lake so they could eat a quick lunch. Lily dropped some of her crackers. When they finished they fed those crackers to the mallard ducks swimming right in front of us.
Once we were all set up we checked to see if we could rent a boat. The lake our campground was on did not have boat rentals but we were much more interested in renting a boat on Lake Washington which is in between Seattle and Bellevue. Adam interned for Microsoft during the summer of 1998 so he was somewhat familiar with this area. When his parents and sister came to visit they rented a boat. Adam called the same company which was the Yarrow Bay Marina in Kirkland, WA. They had a boat available for us at 3:30 so we quickly got all our gear together and jumped in the truck.
The weather was beautiful and we had a blast taking a self-guided tour of Lake Washington.
The views of Mt. Rainier were breathtaking.
The large, lakeside homes were amazing to see.
We had to slow the boat down to admire Bill Gate's beautiful home which is very hard to realize the enormity of through the dense vegetation surrounding it.
Lily was having a great time helping Adam drive the boat.
Ella was enjoying relaxing with the breeze in her face and taking in all the scenery.
Adam was having fun doing spurts of increased speed to make the ride more fun. During one of these spurts we hit the wind just right and it blew the hat right off his head.
After about ninety minutes we had to head back because it was only a two hour rental. None of us were ready to be done so we called the rental company and added an additional hour. With our extra time we took the boat through the canal and onto Lake Union to enjoy looking at all the cool houseboats and beautiful views of the Seattle skyline.
We headed back to the marina in Kirkland but still had about twenty minutes so we took some time just playing on Lake Washington with Adam increasing speed and jumping waves. The girls could not get enough of this. They were having a great time and kept shouting to go faster and jump bigger waves.
Right on time we pulled back in to the marina at 6:25. We went over to Kirkland for dinner and ate at The Lodge Sports Grille.
When we finished we walked around to check out the area. Adam and I were surprised at how much it had changed since 1998. Back then Kirkland had a ton of art galleries but they were mostly gone now. We walked over to the lake and the girls were having the best time watching all the ducks. They were very interested in the ducks they noticed who were sitting on a rock in the water. On our way back to the truck they stopped to take their picture with a few of the cool statues in this area. We took the short drive back to the campground to end our night.
