| Sunday - Seattle - breakfast,
twins, Archie McPhee, Seattle Center, Waterfront, dinner at Krazy Bird |
| S: Family stuff, interesting to
me but not necessarily to dear reader. We saw the twins in their first day of life. Peter
Alexander Lough, the Russian tsar, and Juliana Miller Lough, the (why not?) American
president, were born just before midnight yesterday. Today, I got to hold my charming,
intelligent, funny, talented niece and nephew in my arms briefly. |
| S: Archie McPhee's is mecca for the
playful - a MUST for anyone into fun. They have so much cool stuff. We spent something
like $60, and if you're a LTW subscriber, you'll have probably gotten some of our booty in
one issue or another. Good views of Rainier today, 14,410 feet and some 70 miles away. We are blessed, throughout this
visit, with superb weather. Seattle Center is worth a visit. They have a pretty good
hands-on science museum which we didn't get to see, and an excellent roller coaster. Space
Needle line too long and admission too high, and we knew we'd get another chance anyway,
but got the general idea. Seemed like endless tourist shops too on the Seattle
waterfront... Was vaguely looking for stuff for Lori and for our house-sitters, a few
hours there, didn't buy anything, but worked up a powerful thirst. We ended up by
Northgate looking for a bar & grill, entered and left the crab house because of no
bar. Spotted the Krazy Bird. 7 or 8 different kindsa margaritas on the menu. We had the
Sam Houston (which came, like a malted, with an extra steel container with the rest
<g> of your drink - five stars just for that, in the upcoming LTW Margarita guide!),
this blue one with curacao, and more Sam Houston. No smoking in Seattle, so we went
outside after an exceptional meal whose components I can't recall. They had a most
interesting tree outside... |
| T: The tree was a palm tree,
with some kind of furry stuff surrounding the trunk. I wondered out loud if it was a
natural covering or something added for some protective reason. Steve replied,
"That's just what you get from masturbating."…a hairy palm. That had me
laughing for days, as well as insisting on a photo for documentation McPhee’s is a great place to find out just how much money you can blow on
various depictions of skeletons. One of my favorite finds here was a hollow
glow-in-the-dark skull whose jaw pops out on the bottom - the coolest pill box you’re
likely to find anywhere. Looks like it might actually be capable of holding a couple
tablets of Alka Seltzer Cold Plus, too.. |
|
| S: I think my fave purchase is
the 60 feet of Desert Storm mine tape - like the police line tape, but red, with
"MINE" in English and Arabic and skulls-and-crossbones interspersed. |
| Monday - Seattle - Waterfront
- Pike Place Market, Aquarium and Omnimax, twins, dinner with mom |
| S: Don't wanna go on too much
about driving conditions, but Seattle is hellish. Best way to get around Seattle if you
don't know where you're going: Stay Off the Freeway (I-5). Pull off and study the map,
then follow the downtown streets. |
| T: I'm not sure I'd recommend
the AAA maps we were using, either. Straight streets and roads on the map turned out to
have meandering curves, dead ends and cut-offs didn't seem to be depicted well. I really
do want to compare these with other maps to see if there's much of a difference. The
blocks in Seattle seem to be pretty short, and by the time you've found one street on the
map you've passed three more. |
| S: Before we go further, let me
say that the navigator did an excellent job, above and beyond, with the tools that were
available. There was no way to know if those maps were lying. |
| S: Pike Place Market is the
Seattle equivalent of San Francisco’s Fisherman’s Wharf, but with a bit more
actual real stuff. Good veggies and seafood on the top (street) level, lots of (one
man’s) junk (is another man’s treasure) on the other floors. T found some good
jewelry stuff in one of the shops. The Omnimax is a Laserium-like
domed theatre. Inexplicably, they featured a film on Mt. St. Helens
every hour, and what looked like better shows, the undersea world and film from jets, only
occasionally. We settled for St. Helens. The theatre was cool and comfy, and the
devastation shots interesting enough, but there was no live film, of course, of the actual
eruption, and at any rate the actual eruption wasn’t of the bright, flaming kind
found in Hawaii, but more like when you empty a very full ashtray into a small trashbag in
a high wind. They had a series of still shots to show this. |
On the Seattle waterfront |
 The incredibly
cute otters, sleeping while holding paws. |
The aquarium wasn’t as
good as that at Monterey, but quite nice anyway. We caught otter-feeding time, always a
delight. Nice octopus in the entryway, decent touch-pool (but no bat ray), cool jellies,
and the usual hordes of fish-shaped fish, of various colors. Again, got to hold babies awhile. They gurgled and made various other
entertaining noises. They’re so versatile! |
| T: We met up with Steve's mom, Nancy,
for dinner at a restaurant on the Elliot Bay Waterfront (great pasta!). We had a pleasant
evening at Pam and Mark's house, playing with their super dog, Cody, chatting and watching
the effects of the sunset on Mt. Ranier. We used their dictionary to look up
"sound" - Steve had been wondering about the difference between a sound and a
bay. It turns out that a sound separates two bodies of land. Puget Sound refers not to the
bay-like area in the Seattle area, but to the entire body of water separating North
America from Vancouver Island. |
Steve, Nancy and Cody (they don't look this grainy in real life) |
| Sunday: REI, twins, Broadway,
dinner at healthy-but-bad Mexican place |
| S: When Lori mentioned B&Bs
for our visit to the San Juans, bills of large denomination immediately sprouted wings and
hastened away from our wallets in my mind’s eye; it was time to obtain some measure
of control. I think all three of my sisters are REI members (though one lives in Houston, as attentive readers will know), and they
recommended the new flagship store downtown, so we went to check it out. Amazing! If you
want to camp, or fish, or raft, or canoe, or bike, or climb, or - in short - if you want
to do anything outdoors, this is the optimum place to do your research. Mountain
bike test track outside. Three-story imitation rock for rock-climbing. Little fake
hillside for testing hiking boots. There’s supposed to even be a rain box for
testing your rain gear. Big, spacious area, with much equipment set up out on the floor,
help but unobtrusive staff, informative comparison materials in each section. We decided
on the North Face Cirrus tent, and a couple of cheap sleeping bags rated to about 30
degrees (anything colder, and we’re doing a hotel). We actually bought the tent at
the North Face outlet for the same price (because they take T’s plastic), which
showed what was so great about the REI installation. |
| Broadway was full of college-age
kids and the down-and-out, but was kinda cool. We found housesitter gift stuff for Lori,
and then tucked in at this mexi place. Healthy but bad? The nachos were thick with
(for all I know) the kind of cheese you find individually wrapped in plastic. The main
course, cheese enchilada and chili relleno combo, was completely smothered in cheese,
evidently to disguise the lack of actual food beneath - the sorriest attempt at Mexican
food I’ve had in a while. Of course, we were close to 2000 miles from the Mexican
border, so some leeway is allowed, as would be in the Midwest. Of course, I pretty much
cleaned my plate. I say, ‘unhealthy, but good.’ Cheese, in any form, is hard to
resist, though this place tested my limits. T: Healthy seems
to mean cooked in vegetable oil and evidently has nothing to do with actual ingredients.
S: Yeah, yeah, may have been healthy, darlin, but felt like a
gutbomb <tm>!
T: The healthy stuff is just the spiel from their signs out front.
We probably did a good thing by opting out of the buffet they offered.
I got to hold babies this day, too. Very entertaining…I
haven’t been around babies as an adult much, and they have an amazing range of
expressions and personality. Juliana shows a marked preference for wearing the hat Uncle
Steve gave her and Pete just wants a hat. She’s such a fashion maven already! |
 Tribute to Jimi on Broadway in Seattle |
