Friday the 13th

On Friday, we had a number of places that we wanted to go -- things to see, shopping to get accomplished. 

We stopped at Mi Mexico in Burlington, WA for lunch -- very good lunch, and very interesting building inside.

Then we drove to Thousand Trails La Conner -- it is on the coast on Skagit Bay. We don't have reservations to stay there on this trip, but wanted to drive through and check it out to see if we might want to visit in the future. One of our neighbors at Birch Bay had told us that it was their favorite campground in the Thousand Trails system. Dwayne and I had done the same about 7 years ago and decided that the roads in the campground were too narrow, and the sites too difficult for Miss Doozie to get into. While we think that Gracie could probably navigate the roads and we could probably find a site that we could get her into, we didn't find it to be all that interesting or attractive. It is a possibility for a future visit, but not something that we can't wait to do!

From there, we drove to...

Snow Goose Produce (https://www.snowgooseproducemarket.com/).

There are a lot of farm stands in this area...

... Snow Goose Produce was a place that Dwayne and I had visited some years ago...

... and what I remembered was the "immodest" (their word) ice cream cones. We each got a "split" scoop -- meaning a single scoop with 1/2 of one flavor and 1/2 of another -- so, that's a single scoop! She also gave us a bowl and spoon because it wasn't going to be easy to eat before it melted all down our hands or parts started falling off. It sure was good though!

We sat at a table outside with a couple from Long Beach, WA (where we will be in about a week), who are planning a move to Bellingham, WA (near Birch Bay where we were last week). It was interesting chatting with them -- they gave us some recommendations of places to visit while we're in Monroe and Long Beach, WA, and in Seaside, OR -- our upcoming stops.

Then we drove back into Burlington to stop at Safeway, Walmart, and Petsmart.

On our way back to the campground, we stopped at Camping World. We generally have a "do not shop" policy with Camping World -- they have such a bad reputation with regard to their customer service and knowledge. However, we need to replace our toilet (I won't get into the issues it is having)... so we had been shopping online. It is hard when we're traveling to get items shipped to us -- Amazon generally is good because they will have a pretty good estimate of when items will come, and we can sometimes have packages sent to a campground that we'll be staying at or use an Amazon Locker. But for big items, the lockers are not available, and the arrival date is often a range of dates (like from 9/17-21), which may cover the times that we will be at a couple of different campgrounds. We sure don't want to order something heavy like a toilet and have it arrive after we leave (or even to have it arrive before we are there and the campground staff have to deal with it). So, we were looking for a retail option. There is a Camping World in Burlington, WA, we had gotten a 10% off discount that we could use with an online order, and we should be able to pick up the toilet at the retail store... except the online store would never let us successfully check out -- we'd get all the way to the payment screen, and then it would say that something had gone wrong. We both tried on each of our computers, we tried different credit cards, we tried not using the 10% discount code, nothing worked. We called the store, and the fellow there indicated that, while the system indicated that they had two of the toilets we wanted, they were not on the floor or in the back -- we wanted bone, they had a white one. We almost said, "Yes, we'll take the white one.", but then backed off. We looked for other online options -- nada. 

So on the way back to the campground on Friday, we decided to stop at Camping World -- maybe they had one in stock and the fellow we talked with just didn't find it, and maybe we would find it. We walked to the back area of the store, and sure enough, the type we wanted was on the shelf, but the picture on the outside was a white one. Then we looked at the model designation -- it was in the bone color! 

We got a guy from the store to help us -- we explained that we had tried to order online -- he agreed to give us the online price and a 5% discount (not the 10% that we were supposed to be able to get online, but, okay) -- so we bought it. We're glad to at least have it in the Jeep, and hope to get it installed in the next few days.

A busy and productive day!