Sister Time

My sister and I got away this weekend for some long overdue "sister time".

I only have one sister so I'm especially blessed that she and I are also good friends.

I turned 60 earlier this year so when we talked about taking a couple of days together she told me she would treat me to an overnight stay at the Village Inn in Fairhaven Washington.

Fairhaven was a town site established by "Dirty Dan Harris" in 1883. The town grew and prospered on the anticipation that the Great Northern Railway would establish a terminal there. However the railway decided to locate in Seattle and the town went into a period of depression. Many people moved away and buildings were left unfinished. In 1888 it amalgamated with the small mill community of Bellingham and slowly established itself as a thriving community.

Today it boasts many locally owned shops and restaurants and is very proud of its small town appeal.

The Fairhaven Village Inn is a lovely heritage building right across from the Village Green and central to all the shops and restaurants. When we arrived we had a great soup and sandwich at a local bakery and then the walking trail along Boulevard Park lured us and we spent several hours walking along the water.

On the way back to our hotel, we stopped to admire the yard art and I thought of Ellen from http://happywonderer.wordpress.com/ as I took this picture.

The flower beds in that yard were in full bloom with a variety of Dahlias in brilliant colour. The perfection of each petal and the amazing complexity of patterns fascinated us and I spent some time taking pictures.

Aren't they incredible?

Later we sat outside a cafe and enjoyed a lemonade, went back to our lovely room to read for awhile and then went out to browse a few of the shops. There were a couple of wonderful toy shops where we found some unique gifts for our grandkids, a kitchen shop (always my favourite) and several art galleries. It was so nice that we could walk everywhere we wanted to go.It was also wonderful to have no agenda or time schedule pushing us.

Dinner was at "Dirty Dan's" - I had some amazing Dungeness Crab stuffed Prawns and Janet had a lovely fettucini dish.
We then spent a very happy 2 hours among the "stacks" at the Village Book Store.

A bonus was the beautiful weather we enjoyed. The forecast had been for heavy rain both days and we were fortunate that it was wrong! In fact we had no rain at all and it was warm enough on the way home to put the top down on Janet's Toyota Solare.
We stopped at Bellis Fair on the way home to do some clothes shopping, and then had a jolt at the Border because we'd bought more than the allowed amount (my fault - I should have checked) Fortunately we had a compassionate customs clerk who mitigated the damage and we were home in time for supper.
We both promised to treat ourselves this way again - soom.

Thank you Janet for an awesome couple of days.