Few places deliver summer as successfully as Western Washington. You spend lazy days reading, eating, petting cats, and floating the river. This is the Deschutes River in Tumwater. You buy a tube, drive to Pioneer Park, float down the river for about a quarter mile, then walk 10 minutes back to your starting point to do it again. To someone who only knows the Los Angeles River (which is dry concrete right now), it’s wild. It’s the kind of idyllic you only see in movies.
The temperature swing is also nice. It’s in the 50s overnight and in the early morning, then gets up to the 80s in the afternoon. So breakfast can be outside while you wrap up in a robe and cuddle with some cats.
Then there’s the fact that there’s berries everywhere. For breakfast I had blueberries from Nene’s yard, and blackberry bushes run along a lot of the roads. These blackberries are in the parking lot for the Nineveh food truck in Olympia.
The Nineveh food truck is home to the Sabich sandwich, which might be one of the best foods in the United States. They have a vegan version where they sub potatoes for eggs. I was so excited that I didn’t realize until later that I took a photo at every stage of unwrapping. (We drove our sandwiches to the Olympia waterfront to enjoy the perfect weather and marina views. Then we walked to the farmers market.)
The Olympic Club Theater was showing Deadpool & Wolverine, which we agreed was the most fun we’ve had at the movies in a while. Plus the Olympic Club Pub serves Cajun tots and will deliver them to your movie seat, so even if the movie is bad it’ll be a good evening.
And I got to try Quality Burrito for the first time. They serve infant-sized burritos and have a vegan version of nearly all their items. (My burrito turned into three meals, so it’s also a good deal!) After all the summer fun I took the Amtrak Cascades to downtown Seattle, then took light rail to Sea-Tac and flew home.

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