My Easter Weekend

Have you ever wondered what kind of trip you can plan over a three day weekend? With less than one weeks notice, this is what I came up with....

Day 1: The Tulip Festival in northern Washington.

It's the perfect time of year to see the flowers in bloom and I was blown away by how beautiful it was. Imagine staring at acres full of tulips stretching out as far as the eye can see. It was just gorgeous and this photo does not do it justice.

On a side note - I think that tulips are my new favorite flower!

Day 2: Drive to Vancouver, BC and walk across The Capilano Suspension Bridge .

Built in 1889, the bridge is a whopping 230 ft above the Capilano River and 450 ft long. Did I mention that it sways, shakes and moves while you are walking across it? I am not going to lie - I was scared as all get out my first time across! Of course, I was on it when this 18 year old jackass grabbed both rails and started shaking it back and forth...at that point I thought I was going to have to start crawling to the other side. Luckily, a nice lady on the intercom told him to stop and I walked the rest of the way.

Once on the other side of the bridge they had signs directing you to the "treetop adventure". It's a shorter series of 6 bridges that run between several trees to give you a "squirrels eye view" of the forest. The short bridges were neat but more importantly I used them as practice before my final run across the big one.

On my last walk across the 'big one' I discovered that the fewer amount of people on the bridge; the more stable it is. Therefore, I waited for it to clear out before I went across. Because it was less shaky, I was able to stand in the middle of the bridge and snap some photos and admire the view for a bit without white knuckling the railing! Here is a straight shot down to the river blow - yikes! I stayed the night in Vancouver and the next morning headed to the Granville Island Public Market. It was my first time at such a large public market and I loved it - it made me wish that I had one closer to where I live!

Vancouver was great and I definitely need to go back and spend some more time there. There are a million bridges that connect different parts of the city and here is one of them:

I thought these birds were cool - not to mention there were about 200 of them.

Day 3: Drive to Seattle. I got a late start because I spent so much time on Granville Island that I got into Seattle around 6pm. After checking into my hotel I walked down to Pike Place Market. I wanted to see the guys throwing fish but unfortunately almost all the vendors had shut down. Here is a photo that I shot later on in the evening.

My next stop was the Space Needle. I got there as the sun was setting and it was fun just messing around with my camera to see what kind of photos I could get. I think that this one is kind of interesting:

It was surprisingly more difficult that I imagined trying to take photos that wouldn't come out blurry. The later in the evening that it got, the more the wind picked up and the building began to sway. Not good for trying to get decent shots.

And from the bottom up:

When it was all said and done I came home with nearly 500 photos to sort through...which is just crazy but wonderful at the same time. I loved having the time just to screw around and get creative with my camera again.

I also realized that I can now mark Washington off my list of "states to see". That makes 39 down and only 11 more to go. They are:

*Alaska *Oregon *Montana *Idaho *Utah *Wyoming *Rhode Island *Vermont *New Hampshire *Maine *Louisiana

Anyone up for an adventure?