Woke up to another sunny day in Portland. Two in a row, what a record!. Unfortunately, we were headed out and on our way to Seattle. Made a quick stop to drop Alyssa at the airport. She had to fly home as her classes were due to start in a couple of days.
Will and I wanted to stop at Mt Rainer National Park for a few hours. As we started driving, we headed into clouds and a lot of fog. We were driving on the scenic byway that didn’t appear very scenic to us.
Then about 30 miles out from the park the sky cleared and it was a beautiful day in the upper forties.
The park was pretty crowded being such a nice day and a three day weekend many families were out taking advantage sledding or snowshoeing. We stopped at a couple of the pull-outs and took some photos and just enjoyed the majesty of the over 14,000 foot Mt Rainer. The mountain is still an active volcano that is monitored, but as with other active volcanos could blow anytime.
Stopped outside of Tacoma to visit one of Will’s cousins. Had an enjoyable dinner and drove into downtown Seattle for the night.
Surprisingly, we woke up to a partly cloudy, but mostly sunny day. That was good as we had planned to do a lot of walking. First up was out Beneath the Streets tour. As the name suggests we were going to be going under the streets in the Pioneer Square area of Seattle. What most people don’t know is many cities have actually raised some portion of their streets at some point in their history. Seattle had just made use of theirs to a fuller extent. As streets were raised, customers would have to access businesses via a ladder. Eventually, street level sidewalks were installed and the previous sidewalk area below was typically just used as storage for those businesses. If you get a chance go do a tour, it’s interesting and there are 2 or 3 companies that do this tour regularly.
We walked over to Pike’s Market, which is the fish market that Seattle is famous for. There are also some obscure “sideshow” attractions there now. The Museum of Giant Shoes and the Gum Wall, plus a few artistic light fixtures. The city cleaned up the gum wall a couple of years ago and got over 4,000lbs of used gum for their efforts. As you can see people have rapidly covered the walls and get very creative with their gum.
Continued on to the Space Needle area. The Space Needle is getting a facelift because they are installing glass floors. I had been up the Needle years ago and didn’t feel the need to go while it’s under construction. The area around the Needle has a few museums and other attractions. We found a cool fountain that was set to music of some famous musicians that have come out of Seattle. The kids didn’t seem to mind getting wet and were having a great time.
We were walking past the Duck tour and decided since the weather was nice we’d do the tour.. That’s the tour where the vehicle is a bus that converts to a boat, so you get a land and water tour without leaving your seat. It was fun, the guide tells corny jokes and plays music that they get you to sing along to. We went into Lake Union which offered some nice views of houseboats and downtown Seattle. We felt the tour didn’t really have very many interesting sights and would probably suggest, if you want to do a duck tour Washington, DC may be a better place.
The next day we were headed out again, but drove 30 minutes north of the city to do the Boeing tour before getting on our way. Most people booked this tour in advance as it tends to sell out. We really lucked out as we had only 5 people on our tour. The groups before and after us were packed. The plant here is Boeing’s assembly plant. The parts are manufactured in Boeing’s other plants throughout the world and flown here by plane. So yes, huge sections of planes are put in another plane and flown in. They don’t’ allow pictures on the tour, but will give you a free photo done in front of that green screen.
Next we made a stop to view the Snoqualmie Falls. These 268 foot falls are one of Washington’s top attractions and really impressive.
