We left Whidbey Island Wednesday morning and headed for the mountains. Rather than take the fast route along Rte. 90 we went through the North Cascades. I'd driven over the mountains with two of the boys in 2003 when we went to visit Leslie and Cady and remembered the drive as being spectacular. We were not disappointed.

We stopped briefly on the eastern side of the mountains in Winthrop and the saddle-topped bar stools at the coffee shop that I remembered from 13 years ago were still there.

The car, which I have named Whidbey did a very admirable job getting up and down the mountains.

Once you get over the Cascades the sky opens up, the ground flattens and the horizon moves far, far away. It's beautiful.

We spent the night with our friends Kevin and Debbie in Spokane. They think of their city as one of the best kept secrets in the country and I'm inclined to agree. There are tons of bike paths up and down the countryside, the city is very walkable, there are farmers' markets every night of the week and music festivals all summer. The weather was hot (low 90's at dinnertime) but the air is dry and clear. I could definitely see going back for a longer visit.

Today (Thursday) we drove across the top end of Idaho and into Montana as far as Bozeman. The countryside is straight out of a John Wayne movie.

I love this town too. They shut down the main street every Thursday in the summer for live music, the people here are incredibly friendly and our hotel (the Lewis and Clark Motel) has free wine and hors d'oeuvres in the lobby.

Our road trip has begun with a short 50 miles or so north of Seattle. We took possession of our lovely new car on Monday morning and headed to our friends' house on Whidbey Island. We have fallen in love with this area and are laying the groundwork to move here and live happily ever after. The groundwork mostly involves dreaming.

When we woke up this morning it was very foggy but by noon it had cleared off and the mountains, the Olympics to the west and the Cascades to the east, had reappeared. We visited Fort Casey on Whidbey Island then took the ferry to Port Townsend on the Olympic Peninsula and walked around for a bit. We were back at the house with time for a nap before dinner. Life can be pretty taxing when you're in vacation mode.

Lee and Chris check out the big gun at Fort Casey.

Lee with his head up the... 

Lee and Annie peer out of one of the lookouts.

Annie does a puzzle on the ferry. Apparently many of the Washington state ferries have puzzles set up for the passengers to work on during the ferry trip. How cool is that!

The Olympic Mountain range on the horizon in Port Townsend.

That's Mount Baker in the Cascades hovering in the distance.

We've landed in the U.S. and are quickly adjusting to the new time zone, new weather, new language. Okay, not really a new language, just one we haven't heard so much of in the last two years. Our flights from Osaka to San Francisco to Seattle were uneventful and I'm glad they're over. I'd have to go back and really count carefully to be sure, but I'm pretty certain those flights are numbers 50 and 51 since we started our travels in August 2014. That works out to about one flight every two weeks. Enough is enough, for now anyway.

We landed on Thursday. We had one of those odd time warp things where we left Osaka at 4:30 Thursday afternoon and arrived in Seattle at 3:00 Thursday afternoon. Despite that we quickly settled into sleeping at night and being awake during the day. On Friday we spent the day shopping for a car, quite successfully I would say. Tomorrow they're delivering to Zach's apartment our brand new sea glass green Prius V. The road trip starts once we load her up with our suitcases.

But before then we've had a great time visiting with Zach and Cierra. On Saturday we went into the city and toured around. We walked by the aquarium...

...then took the ferry to West Seattle where we ran into some pirates. Apparently it's the beginning of some summer festival in Seattle and the pirates were part of the celebration. The skies were overcast so we couldn't see any mountains but Cierra assured us they were there, hiding in the clouds.

This morning (Sunday) we drove out of the city and climbed Little Ci, a nice little mountain in the foothills of the Cascades.

It was a gorgeous day with lots of sunshine and views of Mount Rainier as we drove out of Seattle.

Wednesday, June 22
For our last day in Japan we spent most of it on the bikes. It was great weather - cloudy but no rain and the temperature stayed pretty mild, for Japan in June anyway. The bike shop was once again very helpful in giving us a map and directions, this time north and west of the city, as opposed to our north and east route on the first day with the bikes. Our first stop with Kinkakuji Temple, also known as the Golden Pavilion.

The pavilion was the Shogun's summer palace and it's golden because it's covered with gold leaf. It was very crowded and seemed to be set up mostly as a photo op destination but the grounds were beautiful.

We stayed long enough to take some obligatory pictures and then got back on the bikes again. The second leg we had a bit more trouble following the map and ended up not so much lost as not where we meant to be on the map. But we found many helpful people to get us back to where we needed to be and we got to see more of the countryside and small neighborhood lanes and less of the city streets. It's clearly early in the rice season as we saw lots of rice paddies with young seedlings just starting to grow.

We did finally reach our destination, the Tenryuji Temple and the Path of Bamboo.

Tuesday, June 21
We had looked into hiring a guide for today and doing a walking tour but many of the tours we found online assumed you were new to Kyoto and shy about getting around. After 36 hours in the city we feel like old hands so we saved ourselves the 28,000 yen (a little over $250) and took our own tour.

After breakfast at the hotel (western style - eggs and toast) we took the train to Fushimi Shrine and Mt. Inari. It's the one place that I'd seen photos of and could say that's Kyoto. It started out raining but cleared up nicely. There were lots of people at the shrine but as we walked up Mt. Inari the crowds cleared up as well.

The entrance to the shrine.

We often saw school groups on our tours. This group of students were dressed in traditional clothes, rather than the usual school uniforms. 

We took many, many photos. This is just a sampling.

The view of Kyoto near the top of Mt. Inari.

At the shrine there were strings and strings of origami cranes.

You could buy a small plaque to write a wish on and hang with the cranes.

On our walk back to the train station we found a sweet little coffee shop.

We rested up at the hotel for a couple hours in the afternoon, then walked over to a near-by temple, the largest wooden structure in the world. We then picked up bikes to have for tomorrow's adventure, found dinner at a little shop (over-priced but tasty okonomiyaki) and called it a night. Tomorrow is our last full day here, our last day before we leave Asia, our last day before returning to the U.S.

Monday, June 20
After settling in yesterday afternoon we rented bikes to have on hand for an early start this morning. The bike shop owner had given us a map and a route to follow so off we went. Kyoto advertises itself as being a great city for biking and I'd have to agree. There aren't many (any?) dedicated bike paths but many of the sidewalks are especially wide and labeled for bikes, and the pedestrians seem used to to sharing the sidewalks with the bikers. Driving is on the left side of the road and those rules apply to bikes on sidewalks too. It takes a little getting used to, but we did okay.

I love being on a bike. You can cover so much more ground than if you walk, there's the freedom of stopping on a whim, which you don't have in a car or bus. I love the wind and I feel strong. Biking makes me happy. It is odd though to not have a helmet. In the states or in Kaohsiung I would never consider biking without one but here we just hopped on the bikes and took off. As far as I can tell there are zero helmets in Japan.

We biked along a river then skirted the edge of the hills on the east side of the city, stopping at temples and shrines as we went along.

Ginkakuji Temple

We followed the "Path of Philosophy" for quite awhile where it was peaceful and serene.

We even came across a happy little sanctuary for cats. They were the fattest, healthiest cats we've seen in all of Asia.

Eikando Zenrin-Ji Temple, headquarters of the Jodo Sect of Japanese Buddhism.

Then we headed back to the chaos of city biking and visited the Heinan-jingu Shrine and walked around the gardens.

We were back at the hotel five hours later, which still left us time to put our feet up and still go to the Nishijin Textile Center. We've seen some looms and some weavers on our travels - Cambodia, Thailand, Myanmar - but this has been the first place where I could buy silk thread. Happy day. :)