To Seattle

The drive to Seattle was nice, as well. Just a few hours through pretty countryside. When we got closer there was a lot of water. First stop was Quinn and Jenn’s house. They lived on Troll ave, a very aptly named street. Quite a few interesting things about their place. 1) it was under a bridge. Which sounds sketchy/unpleasant but it really wans’t and 2) there was a troll at the top of the street. Who I’ve seen a picture of before. Dan thinks maybe he was on Orsm.

Quinn does trail maintenance for Olympia National Park and Jenn works at a restaurant. We drove downtown and went to the Pike Place Markets famous for throwing fish (which we did see some of). They also have lot of crafty type gifts and food places (stalls and restaurants). From there we walked down to Pioneer Square home of the Underground Tour. We had a little while so we meandered our way over and hung out until 5. On a personal note when we woke up in Portland it was pretty warm so I wore capris, the rest of the day I spent being pretty cold. The tour was awesome.

So I would definitely recommend the underground tour. It really gives you a lot of good history of Seattle. The city used to be 15’ lower than it is. They had a lot of issues, so instead of filling in the tidal flats that they had built the city on they just built large retaining walls and moved the whole city up a story. While this was happening it led to some awkward times for all involved. They also had a lot of sewage problems. So there were 3 places where the tour went underground to what used to be street level of old Seattle. Our tour guide Jim was great as welllllll. (Dan just reached into the backseat and pressed keys on the keyboard and it just happened to be the whole bunch of l’s at the end of the word there) He was pretty funny, and knowledgeable. The two things you really want in a guide.

After the tour we got some Cuban sandwiches from a place Quinn really wanted us to try which were amazing. We drove by it this morning and if it had been open I would’ve gotten another to keep for lunchtime. We at the sandwiches back at their house and chatted. Before bed we went for a little walk down to see a little bit of Freemont (the area that they live in). First stop, Lenin statue. Pictures taken. Second stop, river and google building, more pictures. There were two other things that we had driven by a couple times at this point that I had really wanted pictures of that we ended up walking by as well. One was a bus stop with a stone group of people that people dress up every so often. The other was a bronze(ish) statue of two clowns. Pretty scary actually.

Back at their place we all went to bed in preparation for an early morning. Quinn had to leave at 3:30am to get to work at 7am. He goes out for 8 days at a time then is home for 6. In the morning we got up around 7:30 but then took our time packing the car and found a coffee shop that Jen had recommended nearby. Hoping they had wifi (they did, of course) we brought our computers in to try and plan our next course of action.

The original plan had been Glacier even though only a little bit was open. Unfortunately in the next few days they’re expecting a lot of snow. And rain in Flathead lake which is just south of there. We made the executive decision not to go up there… but that left us with no plan of where to go. We sat in that coffee shop for awhile trying to figure out a route. The decision, to go to Livingston, MT. Originally I was thinking Bozeman but the goal was to be able to go to Boiling River in the morning. Caleb and I went there when I visited him at Big Sky but Dan hasn’t been, and it’s an awesome place. So Livingston is about a half hour closer, and will only give us an hour drive in the morning.

Today has been an epic day of driving which, coupled with the fact that we got a late start leaves us getting to the hotel around 10 (and we’re stopping for gas and a bite to eat in Bozeman… so it’ll be even later). But that’s ok cuz we have about an hour of driving left!! Tomorrow is a new day and one I’m really looking forward to at boiling river. We’ll drive towards Rapid City and tonight I’ll have a look to see where we might want to stop (and what the weather will be like). We’re trying to avoid camping in rain/snow which, unfortunately, has us doing a lot less camping than I had originally planned on. But it’s ok because this is the vacation of a lifetime, and we’ve saved for it so we’ll be fine. Until next time….

PS Dan just pointed out that a week from tomorrow (or the next day) we’ll be in Cornwall. That’s crazy. The past couple weeks time has gone so quickly. It all blurs together as well. It’s hard to keep track of the days sometimes. Fun though. It’s pretty liberating to think that we don’t have work to go back to and that the future is wide open. Exciting indeed!