Bay View

Started: 2025-12-22 15:43:56

Submitted: 2025-12-22 22:25:00

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Visiting family for Thanksgiving

For the Thanksgiving holiday this year we visited Kiesa's family in Washington state. Since our last visit, Southwest has withdrawn its service between Oakland and Bellingham, taking away our best travel option. We decided to fly on Alaska from San Jose to Seattle on Wednesday morning before Thanksgiving. Our flight ended up on a 737 MAX 9, and we sat in row 25, one seat ahead of the door plug that blew out in mid-flight on an Alaska flight out of Portland early last year. The only evidence of the door plug visible from inside the cabin was that the bezel around the window on row 26 was slightly larger than the other rows.

Mount Rainier under a 737 MAX 9 wing

The door plug remained intact for our flight to Seattle, including the lengthy taxi from the runway to the gate. When we got to baggage claim our flight was completely absent from all of the monitors telling us where we could find our bags. Multiple other flights (including those that wouldn't arrive for hours) were displayed on the monitors. I walked up and down the cramped baggage claim looking for our flight, checking all of the summary monitors (all of which seemed to be showing the same information, none of which showed our flight) and the displays on each of the baggage carousels. Finally I tracked the AirTag in the bags, which gave me a rough location that might have been somewhere in the vicinity of several of the carousels I had checked several times. Around the same time Kiesa checked the Alaska app, which did indicate a specific carousel. We converged on the correct baggage claim at the same time as our bags came around from the far side of the carousel. Our flight number was nowhere to be seen on any of the monitors, but at least we had figured out where to find our bags.

We picked up our rental car (despite paying for a full-sized sedan, I ended up with a minivan, which was considerably more car than we needed) and dropped by Panera Bread in Southcenter for a late lunch, then headed north through Seattle to Whole Foods in Lynnwood so we could feed ourselves, including a pumpkin pie that I wanted to eat for Thanksgiving and no one wanted to bake. It was our only chance to get groceries after landing, and it was everyone's last chance before Thanksgiving. The parking lot was packed with cars driving in circles jostling for the next available parking space. It was complete chaos, and reminded me of any Trader Joe's parking lot on any Sunday afternoon.

I let Kiesa out of the car as soon as we entered the parking lot, then started circling in search of a space. Most of the spaces were marked "compact", which I'm sure seemed like a good idea at the time, but I wasn't going to try to wedge my rental minivan into a compact space. (Many other people appeared to have faced a similar dilemma and made the opposite choice.) On my third orbit I found an open space and parked and entered the shopping mayhem inside.

We completed our shopping and headed north to Kiesa's parents in Mount Vernon. It was raining lightly for most of the drive, just enough that I had to find the lowest-intensity windshield wiper setting and occasionally step up the speed. Traffic leaving Seattle was heavy, especially at choke-points in Marysville (which I expected) and further north (which I didn't).

We dropped by Kiesa's parents for supper, then headed to our Airbnb in Bay View. We previously stayed there four years ago and nicknamed it "the sulfur house" because of the distinct smell of sulfur in the water, to the point where the shower felt like a hot spring and the water was difficult to drink. This time we picked up bottled drinking water at Whole Foods. Like last time I amused myself picking through the house's log books; the house has been used as a family vacation home since the 1990s. One log book had thirty years of entries documenting summer visits and upgrades to the house and visitors inside and outside the family. I found our entry from four years ago in the guest book, and added a new entry before we left.

Thanksgiving

We ate Thanksgiving dinner at my brother-in-law's house in Bellingham, including the pumpkin pie we picked up at Whole Foods ("just like my grandmother used to buy from Costco," I quipped on social media).

Pumpkin pie for dessert

After eating Thanksgiving dinner we immediately transitioned into Christmas, because our holiday schedule dictates visiting my family for Christmas so this is the only time we'll see the Stone family this winter. The kids headed downstairs to play Nintendo Switch, giving the adults in my generation the opportunity to head out on an after-dark hike down the road at Galbraith Mountain. (This gave me a chance to try out their plug-in hybrid RAV4, which performed much better than the disappointing eco-mode RAV4 I rented a couple of years ago.) We walked on a short loop through the damp forest, lit only by our LED headlights. The rain paused for our hike, but water dripped from the trees and mud squelched underfoot.

Galbraith Mountain parking lot in the dark

We headed back to our Airbnb for the night ahead of seeing family again on Friday.