Yesterday was a long day. A very, very fun day, but also a very long day.
It could have been better had Shobhit and I headed up to Skagit Valley earlier than around 12:45. but, it is what it is. This was part of the compromise, part of that being this trip on Saturday instead of Sunday. Traditionally, I reserve the actual day of my birthday for Shobhit, although admittedly this time I combined that with the proposal to Mimi that we meet up while we're up in Skagit Valley, because I wanted to go and see the
Northern State Mental Hospital, opened in 1912, closed in 1973, most of its buildings long since abandoned, now part of the Northern State Recreation Area (or NSRA, which Mimi consistently called it). Mimi was very familiar with it, and was very happy to meet up with us out there.
I got Shobhit on board by proposing that it would be a way for us to go up and see the tulip fields of the Tulip Festival, which we have gone to see every single year now
since 2017—I'd be happy just to go, say, every three years. We did have more sporadic breaks of years between visits prior to 2017, but it seems Shobhit really likes it up there this time of year, particularly the plant nurseries where he can get plant starts. And actually, with Shobhit so busy working on his Seattle City Council campaign, without this proposal, we actually would have wound up skipping a drive up there this year.
So, at first, I coordinated with Mimi to meet up with her on Sunday, and I would meet up with both Lynn in Everett and Shauna in Lynnwood on Saturday. But then Shobhit discovered how effectively he gets campaign contributions at a table outside the Capitol Hill Farmers Market last weekend, and so he asked to swap the days around. Thus, the "Birth Week Day with Shobhit," this year, turned into the day before my birthday instead of my birthday itself.
In terms of the weather, this worked very much in our favor. The weather shifted back to cloudy and cooler temperatures today, which is the last official day of the Tulip Festival. But yesterday was beautiful—which, unfortunately, also created a separate but related problem: traffic.
Mimi even texted me to be warned that traffic around the tulip fields was likely to be crazy, as yesterday was shaping up to be the last nice day of the Tulip Festival, in a year when the season started much later than usual. And holy shit, she wasn't kidding: we were just trying to get to our first stop at Schuh Farms, and there were one- or two-mile stretches our GPS said would take 45 minutes to an hour to drive through, just to get past the turn for the other cars headed toward the famous stops of Roozengaarde or Tulip Town (neither of which did we go to this year).
The thing was, though, the traffic was awful the entire way there, not just in Mount Vernon. We checked the directions on our GPS before leaving, and it estimated a two-hour drive for the roughly 60 miles from Seattle to Mount Vernon. That's about double the time it should take without traffic. And then we left, and it just kept getting progressively worse. Shobhit really thought the traffic would ease up over time, but given the time of day we left, that was insanely naive.
I didn't blame or resent him, though. He wanted to get a slightly late start with the hopes of getting a couple more donations in the morning. Granted, he did wind up spending some of that time just sitting on the living room couch and watching TV, but whatever. I think he may have been waiting to hear back from some people, so there's that. We wound up so late getting back in the evening that he commented many times that we should have left earlier, but by then, what could we do? I had the same attitude on the whole way up there, even when the freeway traffic was so bad that GPS told us we could save 14 minutes by
driving through town going through Everett. Shobhit was tightly wound the whole way, griping about the driving of everyone else on the road, and I just remained calm. I knew that getting snappy with him or how uptight he was being would only have been counterproductive.
In the end, I am almost positive it took us longer yesterday than it ever has to drive to Mount Vernon from Seattle:
three hours. Every person we told that, including Mimi, was stunned. And although surely a lot of people on the freeway the whole way were indeed also headed toward the Tulip Featival, they couldn't possibly
all have been. I think it was just the fact that it was the first Saturday of the year so sunny and warm—Shobhit and I didn't even need jackets—that everyone and their mother just wanted to get out.
This three-hour drive that started only at about 12:45 really did a number on the rest of the day's plans, though. We managed to do everything we wanted, but it did mean we didn't get back home until about 11:20.
The first stop was Schuh Farms, as I already mentioned. It took ages to get to that even once we were in Mount Vernon. Shobhit bought some vegetables, some small potatoes to plant in his pea patch at home, and we decided to buy one of their delicious pies to bring to Mimi and her husband Steve later so we wouldn't be coming empty handed. Next was Christianson's Nursery, where Shobhit bought several plant starts.
Those were two of the three places Shobhit now always stops every time we go up there. Between Christianson's Nursery and Country Farms, though, we spent about ten minutes driving the roads around the back sides of the tulip and daffodil fields, to get some scenic photos without having to pay for the likes of Roozengaarde or Tulip Town. We did find one small parking lot to stop in so we could get out of the car and take some closer photos, and a couple of selfies, like we do every year. I didn't get nearly as many photos as usual when the flowers are the main reason for visiting, but I still got about 18 shots out of it.
Now, I had hoped to meet up with Mimi as early as maybe 4:30 at the Northern State Mental Hospital, which really would have been ideal. Instead, we started that twenty minute drive around the flower fields at about 4:38. And then, we drove to Country Farms, a produce stand Shobhit likes in Burlington. On the upside, Burlington was on the way and only about a 15 minute drive to Sedro-Woolley, where the NSRA is.
Mimi had asked me to text her when we were about 45 minutes away from the NSRA, and I texted her when we were about 15 minutes away from Country Farms: I figured 15 minutes to get there; 15 minutes to shop; then 15 minutes to get to the NSRA. And to Shobhit's credit, he really didn't dilly dally at any of the shop stops. I didn't rush him, either. He got a bunch more plant starts at Country Farms.
She wound up arriving there about 15 minutes earlier than we did. This actually worked out well, though, because she was able to tell us the GPS directions went to a different part of the NSRA than we wanted to go, and we wanted to see the abandoned hospital buildings. She gave me the cross streets of where she was waiting, and I was able to plug that in as coordinates for our destination once we left Country Farms.
We found Mimi in her car, and at first we went to gather in her car to drive around the grounds—which have a lot more buildings than I realized. Now that it was past 5:30, though, the gate was closed at the entrance, preventing us from driving in. There was still
an open doorway for us to walk right through, though, so we took the car back to park it, then went into the grounds on foot.
Photos I had found online of the Northern State Mental Hospital made it look like you could walk around inside them. Turns out, all the buildings are closed off, with NO TRESPASSING signs posted at regular intervals. Nearly every pane of glass was broken, though, which made it fairly easy to get photos of the dilapidated interiors—perhaps also the way the other photos I'd seen online were taken. So, I still got some good photos, and found it absolutely worth the trek out there.
I think Shobhit felt a bit differently. He kept saying it was going to be "fucking depressing." I think he did find it wasn't quite like that once we actually got there, though, and we had a nice, leisurely walk around the grounds, which included a very picturesque footbridge over Hansen Creek.
We might have headed back home shortly after that—by that point it was about 6:20—but Mimi had invited us over to her and her husband Steve's house in Mount Vernon for dinner, and I had already accepted. Plus, we had only just met up with her. We weren't about to just bail on them at that point. Not even when she ordered takeout from the Thai place in Burlington that she raved about, and they were so slammed that the wait for the food to be ready was another 45 minutes.
We then accepted Mimi's proposal of just going back to her place for a quick appetizer of a cheese plate in their kitchen while we wait for the food to be ready. It took a good 20 minutes, maybe 25, just to get back to Mimi's house. Shobhit then rode with Steve to get the food while I stayed behind to chat with Mimi at the house, and Shobhit texted me a couple of pictures from the restaurant, including their
great gender neutral bathroom sign.
Once they returned, we ate. And ate. We ate a lot. And the Thai food was indeed excellent; I would go out of my way to eat there again if given the opportunity. One of the interesting things I learned over dinner, among many, was that Mimi and the lady who runs Taste of Thai connected with each other a few year ago, dating back to before the pandemic—and they only moved up there in 2019, less than a year before the pandemic hit—but, to date since the pandemic, Mimi and Steve have yet to dine indoors at a restaurant. They have done outdoor dining a few times, but generally they're still sticking to takeout.
I was a little surprised to learn, a bit earlier in the evening, that when I went to Mimi's 70th birthday party, before she retired from PCC, that was seven years ago! Holy shit. My point is, they're a bit elderly (although Steve is several years younger than her), and that remains a particular concern for them. As far as I know, to date they have still not ever had covid. Somewhat to my surprise, although she had mentioned it a year or so ago when first proposing a visit at their house, she did not ask that we take covid tests before coming to visit yesterday. That may have to do with how much less common testing is anymore. But, I still have lots of tests and I continue to order the free boxes from the state every month they continue to be available, so I tested both Shobhit and myself yesterday morning—both negative. (It was actually the third time I tested over the past week: the previous two being before Gabriel's birthday brunch, and before meeting up with my dad, who just recently finished his prostate cancer treatment.)
I texted Mimi a photo of the negative tests, and wrote,
All clear! I shouldn't be any patient zero today 🙂 (Not for this anyway lol)
And she replied:
That's thoughtful of you to check! Thanks 😊
That seemed to suggest she didn't necessarily even expect it. She knows full well we are all about being up to date on vaccinations, in any case. I'm still glad we tested, just to be sure.
Anyway, the dinner was delicious. And then, Mimi actually
baked a chocolate cake for me! She also had sample pints of
five different flavors of ice cream from her local Skagit Valley Co-op. Plus, a jar of raspberry jam topping. After presenting the cae to me with four tall, lit candles in it, the best combination I had was the chocolate cake, topped with the orange flavored ice cream, topped with the raspberry jam. Holy fuck it was tasty.
So, we arrived at the house at 7:20. It must have been about 9:30 when we were finally headed back out again, or at least getting around to it. Shobhit likes to avoid driving at night if he can, and I often offer to drive if it will get him off my back about leaving earlier. He asked me to drive back home, and so I did. By now the directions had the drive back home down to about 70 minutes, which was a dream compared to the drive up north in the afternoon. I did get a bit tired as I drove, but listening to and singing along to Rufus Wainwright helped.
It was so far past 11:00 by the time we got home, I couldn't even process photos. I barely got that part done this morning, and then had even more things to do all day today, which is why I'm posting this entry about yesterday so late. I think I covered yesterday about as well as I could be asked to today, though. Back to work tomorrow! And, I'll write about today tomorrow. Now I'm going to bed, quite thrilled to have finally pulled off a Birth Week fully as planned and confined to the intended 10-day stretch.
