Dateline August 18, 2019, Camp Wilson and Old Friends
The Taylors. We joined Cathy and Will on a ferry over to Mukilteo to meet Linda and Lee Taylor for an early dinner and a beer at the Diamond Knot Brewery and Alehouse.
This is a friendship that runs deep, all the way back to childhood. Lee's grandfather and John and Will's grandfather were close friends; Lee's father, whom everyone knew as Uncle Frank, and John and Will's father were the best of friends; and the families have been close ever since. Lee's mother, Auntie Phyllis, is doing fantastic in her mid-nineties, and Lee says her sense of humor is as good as it ever was. We had a wonderful time catching up on all the family news, and we hope to have Lee and Linda down to Flagler Beach in the coming year.
Langley. Cathy's sister Beth had bought a home in Langley back in January and invited us over to see it, half an acre of sensational forest and gardens, and then treated us to lunch in town. We took the one-mile walk and came away with a real feel for the place. As a boy, John used to fish with his father right off Langley; they would take the boat from the beach house at Tulare Beach, on the Tulalip Reservation, around the head of Camano Island and over to Langley. We had our lunch and made the walk back.
On the way we passed an old motel we simply had to get a picture of.
Will told us afterward that the motel belonged to a local architect John remembered from Mercer Island, Todd Soli, the younger brother of John's grade-school and junior-high friend Bart Soli. John and Bart once had the time of their lives when their parents took them skiing at Sun Valley, Idaho. Old memories are so much fun.
Friday night with dear old friends. The food Cathy and Will set before us all week was one long feast, sockeye salmon, smoked chicken, Angus and Wagyu strip steaks, Chinese pork slices, and on Friday every kind of sausage and dog you could want, with sensational wines all the way through. That Friday evening, dear friends of both couples drove up to Camp Wilson for a barbecue.
Mark Wanick was one of Will's high-school friends from Long Island, and we have all been good friends for years.
John Wilson came to know John Hoverson through his boyhood friend Don Galbraith; the two Johns first met in high school when John Wilson was out visiting Seattle, and after John Hoverson moved to New York City to work for Price Waterhouse, they kept the friendship going, very likely in a fair number of Manhattan bars. Lifetime friendships are the best kind, and these couples are proof of it.
It was a wonderful evening of good food, good wine, and good friends, a fine ending to our trip through Washington.
As the sun finished setting over what Will rightly calls one of the best views in the country, it was time to say goodbye, until we can all be together again.
