A Whirlwind Weekend of Wrongs (and Wrights?)

Some weekends go by quickly, and this one seems like one of those.

Sue and I decided to give our trip around the North Cascades Highway one more try.  We left at about 9am Saturday morning, and the weather was on our side this time.  The skies were blue and it was clear and sunny.  This time we didn't make any wrong turns, but I did have one major error in judgment:  I thought we could do it in one day.

Wrong.

• I failed to consider all the times we would stop for pictures, some of which were over a half hour long.
• I failed to factor in the shortness of the day sun-wise.  By the time we got to our "halfway" point, the sun was almost spent already.
• I failed to allow for the fact that the sun was on a fairly low orbit this time of year, and it never really got "overhead" like it does in summer.  Add in the mountainous terrain and there were lots of places that could only be shot during the optimum sun hours of the day.

Yes, I made several mistakes.  One could say I ruined the trip, but actually we did get a lot of really good shots.  I decided when we stopped in Winthrop and ate dinner that we might as well go ahead and head for home.  At that point, home was a long ways away.  It was during our drive out that we determined that we were passing some of the most colorful stuff we had seen all day but couldn't shoot it in the waning sun.  We drove out in a sort of frustrated silence most of the way along that potentially beautiful area.  A few hours later, we had just crested Blewitt Pass on the way home when the traffic stopped.  I mean stopped.  Nothing was moving and we had no idea how long it would be or how far ahead it was.  I had the choice about a half hour prior to that:  Do we go this way or that way?  Again I chose wrong.  As the day was already long and tedious, I opted to turn around and backtrack all the way back to the turning point so we could head home another way.  We finally got home at 11:30pm.  We both agreed that we should have stayed overnight--Whether we had our stuff with us to do so or not.  Here are some of the good parts of the day:

So what was this part of the title that mentioned Wrights?

Yesterday morning I got an email chat from my son daughter-in-law, Dana.  Mark was winging his way up here on a short business visit trip and wanted to get together.  Cool!  He wanted to see the Boeing Museum of Flight (remember the Wright Brothers?) in south Seattle so that to be our meeting place.  Sue wanted to go, but was torn:  She didn't want to miss the guest speaker from South Africa at her Kingdom Hall yesterday afternoon.  Instead, I stopped at my mom's house.  I knew dad wouldn't want to go, but you should have seen mom's face light up when I asked her if she wanted to go with me to meet her grandson!  She has been corresponding with their family since I learned about them a few years ago, but has never actually met.  We had a great visit at the museum, walking and chit-chatting.  We finished our visit with a stop for dinner at Red Robin.

I told myself this morning, had we stayed overnight in Winthrop the previous night, the meeting with Mark might not have happened.  Still, I wish I would have done several things differently.

All and all, a whirlwind of a weekend for sure.