Drive in a circle

John spent the morning doing some maintenance on the trailer.

I spoke with the store manager at the grocery store where we paid for but left the store without our rib steaks. He was very gracious and offered to make us whole. As I explained to him, it would cost as much in fuel to return to the store as we paid for the steaks so I graciously declined his offer. I told him that I just wanted to advise him of our experience and appreciated his listening to me. I told him that after this experience, I will have to double check every checker from this point forward. I also told him that I appreciated pleasant checkers but when their talking slows down the line and I hear a part of their life story, that is too much information. As a shopper, I just want to get in and get out. I also told him that the steaks represented 18 percent of our total food bill and was going to be two meals for us. He said he totally understood what I was saying. He said the store policy was to encourage their checkers to be friendly and engage the customers. I said that is fine to a point but they should not forget what they are doing. He totally agreed and said he would speak with the checker involved.

We have seen prices around here for diesel to be $4.75 - $4.79. a gallon There is an Indian gas station down the road from us that we saw had diesel selling for $4.56 yesterday. We know where we are going to fill up. As we headed out for the afternoon, I noticed that they had dropped their diesel price by 20 cents to $4.36. WOW! This totally confirmed where we were going to fill up our tank. Interestingly enough, as we headed for Olympia, we noticed that diesel prices at the other stations had not come down. So what gives?

So why drive to Olympia? We were going to the Washington State Fish and Wildlife Department to see about picking up their Wildlife Viewing Guide. We picked one up in Idaho and it gave us great tips for wildlife viewing. We were told that every state produces a guide so we wanted one for Washington. When we got there, we learned that the guide was nothing like Idaho's and was pretty generic as to the type of wildlife found in Washington and not where. We weren't going to spend $30 for that. We also have learned that while Washington does not charge a day use fee for their state lands, they are charging a parking fee; either $5 a day or $30 for a year's pass. Since we are on the Olympia Peninsula which is a National Park, we declined to buy a pass. A wasted trip.

We had decided that from Olympia we would drive to Gig Harbor making a big circle for our travels for the day. Gig Harbor is a quaint harbor town. Beautiful homes abound around the waterfront as well as beautiful boats/yachts as shown below:

There was a restaurant that had been recommended to us as having the "best" fish and chips. What we found was a very busy restaurant on the waterfront with over priced fish and chips. Granted, the fish was halibut but two very small pieces and lots of fries for $13.95 is overpriced in my opinion. We feel ripped off.

One of the things I love about the Northwest area is there beautiful flower baskets. I took a picture of this one near our truck in Gig Harbor.

Our trip home took us through Belfair that appears to be a good sized town. Driving along the Hood Canal, you drive past an odd mix of assorted large, beautiful homes and some average homes on the waterfront. Things seem to change once you arrive in Union where the area looks depressed.

We stopped at the Indian gas station to fill up the tank and thankfully, the price was still $4.36 a gallon for diesel. How sad that we would be thrilled to be paying this price and consider this as cheap fuel. Hopefully, this trend will continue.