Today is another short drive, only 2 1/2 hours from Portland to SeaTac where we will be spending the night before our flights back home. We try to delay as much as we can at the hotel in the morning, but we aren’t good at cooling our heels when we are ready to go. I have found some goofy things we can do that will hopefully waste enough time to get us to the hotel for check in.
The first stop is the Hulda Klager Lilac Gardens. Hey, what can I say? It looked cool from the brochures. It’s probably a little past prime for the flowers, but, we’re stretching here, so off we go to Woodland, WA, half an hour a way to visit Hulda’s house. Known as the Lilac Lady, Hulda’s family came here from Germany in 1865 when she was 2, bought land and built the farmhouse that houses the gardens today. She always loved flowers and began hybridizing lilacs in 1905. By 1920 she had so many different varieties she decided to hold an open house – which continued each spring. As her reputation became known, other towns would send delegations to see her lilacs and learn from her.
There is a long history of floods (took out all her gardens), rebuilding, her death, the home and gardens wallowing in disrepair and the Garden Society stepping in to save the property from destruction and development. In order to get the land, a member of the garden society traded 7 acres of her land for the 4 acres here at the gardens, then deeded it to the Lilac Society – which has owned and operated the property ever since. All volunteers, their dedication is obvious. The flowers and the landscaping is gorgeous (even a little past season), and the house is charming with an great peek into the life and times of Northwest settlers in the 1800 and early 1900s. We took about an hour to stroll the gardens, snapping away at all the lovely flowers – and then to tour the inside of the house.
Next up on our time wasting tour were covered bridges! There is an entire covered bridge drive we could have made, but it looked like it would take an incredibly long time as well as take us completely out of our way, so we chose to go to one bridge that was only about 20 minutes from the gardens – the Cedar Creek Grist Mill.
It was really easy to get to – just take a right at the main intersection after the Gardens and follow this lovely winding road through farmland and forest. Really pretty and peaceful country! Unfortunately, the grist mill working tour was closed (only open on Saturdays and Sundays), but the scenery was open to all (LOL).
We walked behind the mill to watch the rushing stream flow over the rocks and down toward the mill…
Then walked across the covered bridge …
to a path on the other side of the stream where you could get a full view of the mill and the stream.
Pretty neat. Turning around, we made our way back through the quiet country roads and onto I-5 to head our way north to SeaTac and our last night on the Left Coast!
We were able to check into the hotel early, and they gave us a great room on the 2nd floor with a balcony overlooking the golf course. It was perfect – we moved chairs outside and sat there relaxing while watching the golfers play. Dinner was at the Ram Brewery – where we had a Restaurant.com coupon – where we sat at the bar chatting with the bartender and snacking. They had just changed their menu and eliminated their beer cheese soup, which was a huge disappointment, but the other options we selected ended up being incredibly good.
We ended the night back on our balcony, relaxing and listening to the birds chirping around the quiet golf course. A perfect end to a perfectly wonderful trip.
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