We arrived in Washington on May 26^th and set up at the Camp Murray Beach RV Park. Camp Murray is the Headquarters of the Washington National Guard and the RV park is operated by the Washington National Guard Association. Camp Murray is our favorite campground in the area. All the sites are full hookups and on the shore of American Lake. We lucked out on our campsite and got Site A-1. This, in my opinion, is the best site in the park. It is the only site that has your door facing the lake and is easy to back into.

Family was our reason for visiting the area. Our oldest son and his family (including our three granddaughters), and our daughter live in the area. We wanted to be there in time for the year-end school activities.

Several years ago, our granddaughters got involved in wrestling, first as a club sport and now in high school. As with most sports, the girls have had a shortened season and had to follow COVID-19 protocols. They wore masks while wrestling, the number of visitors was limited, and we had to enroll in contact tracing before we could enter the gymnasium. All three girls are very skilled wrestlers and win their matches pretty consistently. Because there are fewer girls involved in the sport, they sometimes wrestle with boys that are in their weight class. While they don’t always win these bouts, it does give them a good opportunity to improve their skills. I think they did enjoy competing against boys and winning!

The primary reason we wanted to get to the area so early was that our oldest granddaughter, Katrina, was graduating from high school – at sixteen years old! We are all so proud of her. She has been able to take classes at Tacoma Community College in addition to her high school classes and, as a result, will also graduate from Tacoma Community College with two Associate Degrees. Her plans are to attend college at the University of Central Florida in Orlando.

COVID-19 had an impact on her graduation. The graduation ceremony was held in four sessions to reduce the number of students, parents and guests in attendance. At that ceremony each student was presented with their diploma folder. The next day, they had a drive through at the high school where the students picked up their actual diploma. It was fun to help decorate the car and watch the procession of cars past the high school.