Washington State Trip

This past week (July 16-21) Pat and I had a great trip as we went to Washington to attend the PNW Regional Annual meeting. The meeting was held in Olympia (sorry, no pictures from there because I was in meetings most of the time.) We did have a great time in Seattle as well as the couple of days that we spent in Bellingham.

I will apologize for the number of pictures, but there were a lot of great moments. We will keep the text brief for you.

This picture was taken from the top of the Space Needle where we had lunch in the revolving restaurant. The weather was fantastic!



You just don't get that many days in Seattle where you get to see Mt. Ranier like this. Do you see it in the background? Those are not all clouds.

Looking across the Puget Sound.



Pat took this great shot from the bottom of the Space Needle.



Admiring the terrific seafood in the famous Pikes Marketplace.

Pikes had enormous quantities of beautiful flower arrangements for sale.



These next two pictures were taken while we were dining with business friends at CJ's Beach House in Birch Bay. Amazing sunset. I took the first one. Pat took the second.




A great waterfall on the road to Mt. Baker. The name of this falls is Nooksack Falls.



Another great view on the Mt. Baker Highway.

Moss on the trees and ferns everywhere made quite a sight.



Mt. Shuksan



These next 3 pictures were taken at Picture Lake towards Mt. Shuksan. An incredible picturesque place. Wouldn't you agree?

We didn't know it at the time of our sightseeing trip, but the road up to the ridge, known as Artist's Point, had only been open a couple of days after being plowed out. You can see the snow was still very deep.

A great shot with Mt. Baker behind us.

We stayed at Hotel Bellwether located right on Bellingham Bay.



Looking across the port from the other side of the hotel.

On Top of Old Smokey (actually Ben Lomond)

Through Jeremy's encouragement, both he and Suzanne, Tom and myself climbed to the top of Ben Lomond. Jeremy wanted to be on top when the sun rose so we left at 3:00 AM. We didn't quite make it to the top by sunrise, but we got to the ridge.

As a side note, sandwiched between this hike was my two rock concerts. On Friday, Pat and I went to Salt Lake to see Journey, Heart and Cheap Trick. On Saturday night we went to Wendover so that I could go to the Boston concert. (Pat rode with me, but didn't go to the concert as she doesn't enjoy loud music like I do.) We had to come back late Saturday night for church so needless to say I wasn't worth a fiddler's nickel by Sunday night.

Here are the two lovebirds at the ridge.



The sun coming up right around 6:00 AM



The "wise one" in contemplation. (or is it gas?)



Still some snow at the upper elevation.



Can you see Cargill right off my right elbow?



Great flowers everywhere.



A Stewart family favorite.

Black and White Days

Our region, the Pacific Northwest Region, was selected to make a video presentation about how we do business with large dairymen. This video will be shown at the President's Forum in September. The President's Forum is a big to-do where they bring in the top 2% of the employees from all over the world to celebrate successes and share best practices. (By the way, I was selected to go to President's Forum for the first time.) I was interviewed and overall helped facilitate shooting for a day at one of our good customers in Idaho Falls. The film crew were great. They were very professional having done work for TV, National Geographic and the like.

Getting ready for a shot. To my left is my sales consultant, Kenneth. The big guy on the far right is Seth Cannon, the dairy owner. Along with him is his manager, Alex.

The head cameraman doing his thing.



This dairy was right in the middle of processing their haylage. They dumped 125 truckloads a day in this pit. The film crew were amazed.





I thought the grandkids would enjoy seeing these big tractors play dodge'em in the haylage pit.