Tom and I decided to celebrate by camping in our van at Bay View State Park which is only about 15 miles away from us.  It is on Padilla Bay with a beautiful beach, nice trail and a wonderful interpretive center nearby.  So we got up Thursday morning, finished packing up the van and headed out.

We weren’t supposed to be able to check in until 2:30 so we met my mom and Al at the beach and have a lovely lunch with a view.  Mom brought me an anniversary cake as well.

After lunch we were able to check into our spot a little early.

I set out our wedding photo albums on the picnic table.

We managed to forget our pillows so Tom rode his bike Luther back home and picked them up.  It was a good thing we were relatively close.

We had a camp visitor.  It is obvious that people have not been obeying the do not feed the raccoon signs.  But we did not feed him.

My dad and his companion Mo checked into another spot with a nice view.

So we moved the party there and prepared for dinner.  A while ago I had purchased some 2003 wines to have one every ten years on our anniversary.  This was a 2003 Leonetti Merlot.  Unfortunately the cork did not want to cooperate with us.

We finally were able to push in the remains of the cork and strain it through a paper towel.

Fortunately the wine tasted amazing.  We had a lovely dinner.

Russ and Jay brought the grandkids over, and frisbee ensued.

 

Then we had the cake.  It was really tasty.  The kids loved it too.

We walked to the beach to enjoy the sunset.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

 

The grandkids ended up staying with us while Jay and Russ left as they had to work Friday.  This had not been planned but worked out great.  We ended up telling stories by the fire.

They stayed in Dad’s motorhome as we didn’t have room.  So Friday morning we reconvened there.

We walked back down to the beach, except Tom, of course, drove his motorcycle.

The tide was out, and there was plenty to explore on the beach.

Tom, me and the kids decided to walk up the beach to the interpretive center rather than walk the road.  Dad and Mo decided to walk on the rode.

There were some fallen trees we had to get around, and we saw a couple of bucks.

What we hadn’t realized is that there was a scary staircase to get up to the center.

We made it up only to find a sign on the top that it is limited to three people at a time.  I wished they had that sign at the bottom.  But we made it!

I was able to determine that the tide was quite low.

The Breazeale Interpretive Center was amazing.  The adults and kids really enjoyed it.

We walked back to camp, on the road this time rather than going down that scary staircase.  Plus the tide was coming in, and we didn’t want to get trapped.

We had a rousing game of corn hole which Piper won.

We made s’mores.

We put our ribs on the fire pit.

Piper finally crashed out and missed dinner.

My aunt and uncle unexpectedly joined us for a bit which was a lovely surprise.  Russ and Jay came to pick up the kids en route to going crabbing off Guemes Island.  Dad, Mo and us walked back to the beach for another amazing sunset.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Saturday morning this was the status of our camp site.

In the afternoon Tom’s parents and sister visited as well as our friends Pam and Tommy.  It was really nice visiting with them and looking at some wedding photos.

Everyone left, and Tom and I were on our own the last night.  We sat by the fire and listened to All blues on KNKX.  It was nice.

And this morning we packed up and left.  This was our view on the way home this morning.

We had a wonderful anniversary trip.  It was nice seeing everybody and relaxing.