Thursday, July 23rd is here, ready or not ! What begins at 2 am on the West Coast hopefully will end very close to Laurel Fork !

Travis Osborne and his Bible Verse of the Day :

Proverbs 23:17 Let not thine heart envy sinners: but be thou in the fear of the Lord all the day long.

The crowd last night 🌙 at the Moda Center

Howard Mayo and his Motovational Nugget for the Day will appear here shortly!

5 Airports 🛫 and just under 4,000 miles are all that stand between me and our cows 🐄.

5:20 am departure is fast approaching, and for the first two flights ✈️ I will have Lin alongside.

Have yourself a Blessed Day 🙌😇🙏

Wednesday, July 22nd, has arrived, and our Morning 🌄 Brew comes from the city of Roses 🌹, Portland, Oregon!

Howard Mayo and his Motovational Nugget for the Day :

Psalm 34:1 I will bless the Lord at all times: his praise shall continually be in my mouth.

Later tonight, we will head over to the Moda Center to watch the expansion Portland Fire 🔥 host the Dallas Wings !

I’m not sure what all will come across the radar between now and then, but we will do our best with it.

Have a Blessed Day 🙌😇🙏

Travel Day begins with a 45 minute Bus 🚌 ride with a tour of LaConner on the way to the Mount Vernon Amtrak station 🚉

Being thrifty is always a great thing, so when the choice was $1.00 for the Bus 🚌 versus $51.00 for an Uber / Lyft, it was a slam dunk decision.

The ride through beautiful LaConner was an added bonus !

Great way to travel, especially when it’s 8 hours or less.

Tomorrow night 🌙 will involve a WNBA tilt between Dallas and Portland.

20 minutes from boarding the train 🚆!

Being ahead $50.00 is the definition of a Great Start !

More 2 follow !!!

1st sign of water 💧out the window 🪟, approaching Everett

Everett is behind us now. Next up is the shoreline of Mukilteo – no longer a stop but we get REAL close to the water.

The tracks are within 10 feet of the water

Edmonds is both a train station 🚉 and a Ferry ⛴️ boat 🚢… head over to Kingston from here.

**** Taking pics 📸 out of a moving train 🚆 is a challenge !

40 minutes to Seattle, train is running right on time ( 11:00)

Still very much right on the edge of the Sound.

30-minute stop ✋️ over at the King Street station 🚉 in Seattle is in the Books 📚 and we are back at it. The dueling stadiums 🏟 are just to the right.

Starbucks World headquarters…

Next Stop ✋️: Tacoma

Leaving the State Capitol of Olympia at 1:31 pm…

Kelso – Longview (2:40, should be 2:30)

Tuesday, July 21st is here, and so is our Morning 🌄 Brew !

Colossians 3:16 Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom; teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord.

Day 2 of the soccer ⚽️ camp is set to take place today.

The travel highlight for Tuesday is a six hour train 🚆 ride down the coast as we close out things with two days in Portland, Oregon.

Have a Blessed Day 🙌😇🙏

Borrowing from Aaron Sorkin – what kind of day has it been ? In a word, Spectacular !!!

Sitting at Lopez Landing with Lin as we wait ✋️ for our final ferry ⛴️ boat ride back to Fidalgo Island 🏝.

Lin, Rebecca, and Mr Marty Graves at tonight’s dinner at the Orcas Hotel 🏨

Marty Graves is one of the six people that God blessed me/ us with in our lifetime. There is no way that we could have ever accomplished the things we have without our Pic – Six of Angels.

We try our best to treat Marty to dinner 🍽 once a year as a way to show our appreciation for everything he did for us while we were on Orcas Island.

Having spent time with Julio Pascual earlier on this trip ( Florida ), it allowed us time with two of the five that remain. We lost John Culp entirely too early, but the other five are still going strong 💪!

Seven different Ferry Boat ⛴️ rides throughout the Islands 🏝, getting to meet some of the folks that Rebecca works with at the Fire Station, meeting her Puppy 🐶 and having Ronnie give me one of the blackberries that he picked was a few of the bonus perks.

Breakfast at a new diner in Anacortes before the first boat 🚢 was a blessing as well !

Positive news from Shawn Montgomery about his upcoming Cross Country season and Lance Burnett continuing to get acknowledged for his tremendous success over the past two baseball seasons.

Tomorrow morning 🌄 we pack up and head down to the Amtrak station 🚉 for a train 🚆 ride down to Portland, Oregon.

Portland was a HUGE part of my career success, and we will catch a WNBA expansion team game during our two days. It will be fun for sure, but today was just special, sunrise 🌅 to almost sunset 🌇!