122. Riverfront Park, Sedro-Woolley, Washington

This weekend, Charlotte and I undertook our first mama-daughter camping trip!  We've been on lots of overnight trips before, but have always stayed with family or friends - this was our first time camping.  It was the May long weekend, so the border was pretty hectic; we headed inland to hit the border at one of the "quieter" crossings.  So much for that bright idea.  We eventually made it to Sedro-Woolley, the last big town we would encounter on our trip.  The plan here was to hit the playground and then stock up on groceries for the weekend.  The playground was chock-full of kids, which was great in one respect and not so great in another.  I was horrified at one point to realize that I'd lost sight of Charlotte after tending to Theo.  For a few moments, I just couldn't see her at all, even though I thought I was carefully looking at every single possible spot on the playground.  The fact that we were not far from the banks of a very fast river crossed my mind - but I needn't have worried, because little Miss Boston Strong was playing on the roundabout with the boys.  She sure knows how to hold her own with the big kids - she just lets them know how things are going to be.  So the whole mystery of her disappearance had nothing to do with her and everything to do with me, so I tried not to let on how worried I'd been - but she did get a bigger hug than usual next time she came to check in.  The playground is located at N 48.29.425 W 122.13.431 and is point no. 122 on the map at the bottom of home page.

17. Riverfront Park, Vancouver

It wasn't a very nice afternoon for a playground visit - in fact, it almost didn't happen at all.  But we had a bit of a break in the weather and we stopped off at Riverfront Park - we scored both a playground and a geocache in one go!  The playground was pretty small with just two swings, one for little kids and one for big ones.  Charlotte loved it when I was in the swing next to her - we got ourselves in sync and held hands as we swung back and forth, much to her amusement.  She had fun climbing too - the aluminium slide was pretty cool because it was VERY NOISY!

 

It was all I could do to convince her to come with me to look for a geocache just 50 metres or so away, though she got into it once we started looking for the cache.  It was called Serving It Up - a reference to the nearby tennis court and Charlotte was happy to help find it.  The coordinates for a puzzle cache are also just a few metres away - but where the final cache can be found is another story!

Charlotte enjoyed watching the tugboats go by and there were lots of puppies to pat too.  There is a picnic shelter and bathrooms close by - it's a nice little park, or it would have been for us if it hadn't been so very cold!  The park is located at N 49.12.339 W 123.03.067:  https://mapsengine.google.com/map/edit?hl=en&authuser=0&mid=z7IAXiVD2wGY.ke14vi-3MYtI