Graduation and After

Here is the second part of our graduation weekend in Bellingham. The graduation ceremony was all that we could have hoped for. Despite having to read over 600 names in my ceremony, they were able to finish exactly on time in only 90 minutes! We all sweat through the ceremony and then had a bit of time to cool off before we had a great dinner celebration at the Hearthfire Steakhouse on the water. We spent several hours at the restaurant talking, laughing, and enjoying being together as a big family. I'm pretty sure that Dad got about 10 times as many pictures on his camera as I did so be looking for more pictures from him soon.



On Sunday after everyone left town, Heather and I spent a little time together just trying to relax and then we decided to take a drive and try out the new GPS! Heather found a county park that looked pretty interesting in Ferndale, just a few miles north of Bellingham. We excitedly got in the car and hopped on the I-5. We were barely half-way down the entrance ramp when we noticed traffic was at a standstill and backed up for quite a ways. It didn't take long to figure out that there was a pretty intense situation up ahead and we probably wouldn't be moving for a while. After only 5-10 minutes of waiting, people started to turn around and go back up the entrance ramp to the surface streets!! Heather and I couldn't help but just stare at people with our jaws on the floor in disbelief! She captured the whole thing with our camera. Yes. Those are several rows of cars on the same side of the road, going in different directions. Brilliant right? Not so much...



The first thing we found at this park was a fragrance garden. It was full of all kinds of varieties of sage, mint, thyme, rosemary, and other aromatic flowers and trees. It was such a unique garden and was very interesting to explore!



Later, we look some really neat trails through a large wetland area. It was full of all sorts of wildlife and plantlife that we don't usually see. We weren't able to get a good picture, but as we were pulling into the park, a bald eagle was circling overhead! They are such majestic birds. Feel free to click on the pictures to make them much larger.

Here is a Blue Heron



While standing on a bridge taking pictures of the Heron, we noticed this little guy silently swimming down the stream at a pretty good pace! At first we thought he was a small beaver but he turned out to be a muskrat. Too cute!