Pictures from this part of the trip can be found in Gallery, Part 5.

Day 12: Tuesday, October 2

Tuesday morning, we packed up and headed north out of Portland for the 3-hour drive up to Seattle. On the way, we stopped a rest area in Washington and discovered that there are little electric charging stations (for cars) up and down the coast. Interesting. A little further on, we stopped at another rest area and killed time while burning off the unused fuel for our stove, so we could puncture and discard the canister. What a pain it is to do a backpacking trip that involves a flight.

On our way into Seattle, we decided to stop at the Museum of Flight, near Boeing Field. This place was fantastic. We visited big WWI and WWII exhibits before heading over to their airpark, where we saw a Concorde, an old Air Force One (a 707 from the Carter era), as well the first 737 and 747 ever produced. We also spent some time in the "red barn" exhibit (housed in the the original red barn that was Boeing's first production facility). In the end, we ran out of time and had to rush through the rest of the museum before it closed, although we did manage to sit in the cockpit of an SR-71 before we left. We could have spent a few more hours in the museum if they had let us.

After finishing up at the museum, we headed downtown and found our hotel (the Executive Hotel Pacfic) . Once we got settled into our room, we decided to get dinner, and ended up at a little French place called Cafe Campagne, just off Pike Place Market. It was really good food, and it reminded us of a little place we ate at near the Eiffel Tower back in 2006 (which is probably the effect they were aiming for). Although the Pike Place Market was closed by the time we were done with dinner, we spent a little time wandering around the area before heading back to the hotel.

Day 13: Wednesday, October 3

The only breakfast food associated with the hotel was a Seattle's Best coffee shop. Rather than doing that, we decided to just walk back to Pike Place Market and get breakfast down there. The market is full of interesting food, and we bought pastries at one place and some donuts at another place before wandering around the whole market to get a feel for it (including a stop to look at the famous fishmongers, although we didn't see anyone throwing fish). We also gave some money to a little Asian guy playing an erhu (a two-stringed Chinese violin).

We spent the rest of the day walking. First, we walked 45 minutes down the waterfront toward the Coast Guard Museum Northwest. On the way there, we walked past the ferry station, a big container shipping center, and the construction zone for a big tunnel that Seattle is building to replace the viaduct on the waterfront side of the city.

We had a hard time finding the entrance to the museum: it turned out that we had to walk about 5 minutes to the main entrance for the base, check in with the security guard at the gate, and then walk back to the museum (but inside the fence this time). The museum was not very big — mostly models of ships and memoriabilia — but we liked it. We spent quite a bit of time talking to the two volunteers (both Coast Guard vets). They explained a lot of things to us, everything from Coast Guard history and missions to the design of hulls for icebreakers. Later, they told us it was good we came when we did, because the Joint Chiefs had been there an hour before us to catch a ride to some submarine base on the Sound, and that would have been a mess. Unfortunately, we couldn't take pictures of the cutter or icebreaker docked outside, but the volunteers helpfully suggested that pictures taken from inside (i.e. through the window) wouldn't get us in trouble. :)

After leaving the museum, we took a long walk past the Seattle stadiums (it seems like they're all right next to each other?) on the way to Chinatown to get a late lunch. You'd think we could find good food in Chinatown, but somehow we chose poorly. At least the walk to Chinatown was worth it, and we enjoyed walking through the big Uwajimaya market (complete with hundreds of kinds of tea plus live fish tanks and lots of different kinds of oysters).

After leaving Chinatown, we headed toward Seattle's Pioneer Square area, which is sort of Seattle's original skid row, although it has been somewhat reclaimed recently. (Speaking of that, one of the things that stuck out for us about Seattle was the sheer number of homeless people camping out in parks.) Anyway, it was fun to wander through the neighborhood and look at the various buildings, mostly from the 1890s.

We never would have found it on our own, but our Fodor's book suggested the Dry Soda Tasting Room. Dry Soda makes a variety of "gourmet" naturally-flavored sodas in unusual flavors: cucumber, vanilla, juniper berry, lavender, lime blood orange, and rhubarb. We got to sample all of them and learn about the company's suggestions for food pairings, etc. (The idea is that you pair these fancy sodas much like you would a wine.)

When we finished up, we both bought a soda (blood orange for Julie and rhubarb for Ken). Then, we wandered around until accidentally finding Waterfall Garden Park, a man-made waterfall set on the grounds of the original UPS building. It was a really nice place to sit, drink our fancy soda, and take a load off our feet. In fact, we were resting so quietly that the security guard locked us in when the park closed for the day. (We were wondering why the waterfall turned off all of the sudden.) Fortunately, we found him and he eventually let us out. :)

Next, we walked a few blocks to the Klondike Gold Rush Museum, run by the National Park Service in a renovated historic building. It was an interesting way to end the day — especially when we read the sobering statistics about how few of the people who took the risk and headed to the Klondike actually made any sort of profit.

After finishing up at the museum, we walked back into downtown and found our hotel. We decided to dress up a little and got a fancy dinner at Dahlia Lounge, about a 15-20 minute walk from the hotel. It was a nice night for a walk, but a bit chilly. We were early for our reservation and killed a little time in the Bed Bath & Beyond across the street (main redeeming feature: it was warm).

Day 14: Thursday, October 4

We spent all day Thursday walking, too. In a nice coincidence, we happened to be in town for the first Thursday of the month, when a lot of the museums are free. The day started at the Seattle's Not-so-Best Coffee downstairs. After we scarfed down our donuts (and Julie's tiny cup of mostly-toppings-with-oatmeal), we caught a bus out to the area of Volunteer Park. Interestingly, all of the Seattle buses in the downtown area are electric, like in San Francisco.

Our first stop was the Seattle Asian Art Museum. We really enjoyed this museum, especially the Japanese prints, the pottery, and the ancient sculpture. Although we've been to Asian museums before (like in San Francisco), the subject matter here was different.

Next, we headed to the Volunteer Park Conservatory. It was nice enough, but fairly small. Maybe we've been a little spoiled by the Como Park Conservatory, the Lincoln Park Conservatory, and the huge Missouri Botanical Gardens we saw in St. Louis earlier this year.

After finishing up at the conservatory, we headed toward the vicinity of Lake Union. On the way there, we stopped for a mediocre lunch at a Mexican Cafe, and then ran across the flagship REI store (so we took a 15 minute detour and checked it out).

At Lake Union, we wandered around the docks of the Center for Wooden Boats, where we even found a few Lightnings much like Julie's dad used to own. Under the theory that there is nothing half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats, we had hoped to rent one of the wooden rowboats. Alas, we were too late in the season to rent without a reservation. We settled for watching someone set up and sail a gaff-rigged boat. It was probably just as good. There was a pretty stiff breeze on the lake.

Just down the shoreline, we ran across the steamship Virginia V, one of the last remaining boats from the Puget Sound "Mosquito Fleet" (most of the others were sold for scrap during WWII). Admission turned out to be free, so we went aboard to look around. We had a loooong conversation with a very talkative tour guide, who eventually let us go below decks and wander around the engine room unsupervised. The engine (although not the boiler) is over 100 years old and still going strong.

Lake Union is also a seaplane base. Kenmore Air runs both charter flights (i.e. to the Olympic Peninsula) and 20-minute tourist flights from the lake. They have both piston engine and turboprop planes, and we think they were all various forms of De Havilland Beavers. We spent some time just sitting on the shore and watching the planes. The talkative tour guide from the Virginia V told us that Saturday mornings in the summer get pretty crazy, between the tour boats, the usual weekend pleasure traffic, the kids learning to sail wooden boats, and the tour planes landing and taking off.

At one point, something like six planes took off all in the span of 5 minutes, and the dock was empty. We took that as a cue to leave, and so we started walking toward the Seattle Space Needle. We saw it from the ground, but decided not to pay the $19 to go up it. We also wandered into the EMP Museum, but decided that it wasn't worth the $20 admission either.

Originally, Julie had hoped to walk to the Olympic Sculpture Park, but it had been a long day already and we were still planning to visit the Seattle Art Museum during its special First Thursday evening hours. So, instead, we took the Seattle Monorail back into town, for the cost of a bus fare. From there, we walked to a hole in the wall called Two Bells Bar and got a burger and a beer. It was nice to have an inexpensive meal that actually tasted good (our luck with inexpensive restaurants was poor this trip).

Next, it was off to the museum. On the way, we saw a sidewalk sign that said "Cupcake Happy Hour - 40% off". We walked past it, looked at each other, turned around and bought a couple of cupcakes. At 40% off, they were good. Neither of us is willing to spent $5 on a cupcake, though. :)

The Seattle Art Museum is huge. We spent about 3 hours there, and managed to see most of it. However, some pretty large sections were closed for renovations. In retrospect, it was good to go in the evening, because it wasn't as crowded as it would have been during the day. The lobby had a huge sculpture of flying white Ford Tauruses (Tauri?) suspended from the ceiling. On the second floor, we especially liked the Northwest Indian exhibits (including huge totem poles). On the top floor, we really enjoyed the exhibit of African masks. We've both seen masks like this before, but this museum chose to put some of them on mannequins in costume, and also showed video of masks being worn by real people in ceremonies. Many of the masks are pretty strange, and they make a lot more sense in context.

By the time we left around 9:00pm, we were exhausted. But, the nice thing about staying downtown is that we just had to walk a few minutes to get back to our hotel.

Day 15: Friday, October 5

Friday morning, we had 10:30am reservations to tour Boeing's facility in Everett. We grabbed coffee and donuts at a Starbucks down the street (basically the same as the Seattle's Not-so-Best) and then went to get the car. This entailed a long, erm, discussion with the front desk at the hotel over their parking program. In the end, we got what we wanted, but it was a pain. We weren't the only people who had to argue with the desk about their voucher system.

It was close to a 30-mile drive up to Everett, but we made it in plenty of time. The 90-minute tour was definitely worth it. Boeing's facility is huge — over 90 acres of enclosed space — and is the largest enclosed building in the world. We got to see manufacturing lines for several different kinds of aircraft, including the 747 and the 787. Unfortunately, we couldn't take any pictures on the tour (no surprise).

After the tour was over, we wandered around their small museum and looked at things like the turbines used on the 787, and a prototype section of fuselage from a 787 (which is made of composites rather than aluminum). Then, we headed out to get a late lunch at a little place called Weller's Cafe before dropping our backpacking stove off at the nearby Post Office.

After that, our plan was to drive to the Ballard Locks, with a slight detour to find Filson's (which was an outfitter during the Klondike rush and still makes some of the same stuff). First, we got into a HUGE traffic jam — 20 minutes on one highway off-ramp alone. Then, the Filson's we were looking for turned out to be just a shoe store that sells some Filson's stuff. By the time we got to the locks, it was getting late in the afternoon.

We made a beeline for the fish ladder, which is the main attraction at the locks. Unfortunately, it was bereft of fish: kind of like looking at an empty aquarium. We walked back to the visitor center, and had about ten minutes to look around before it closed, so our visit was looking like a bust. We decided to wander around the locks some more and ended up spending more than an hour watching various boats, including a police boat that put the siren on (and the throttle down) as soon as the locks opened, and a big barge being pushed by a tug boat.

Another interesting thing we realized about the locks is that they're a big bike commuting route, even though cyclists have to walk their bikes through the entire property. We stopped a cyclist and asked her about it. The path through and over the locks turns out to be a shortcut, because there's no other good way to get across the water without going quite a bit out of your way.

After heading back downtown to our hotel (taking city streets to avoid highway congestion), we hauled our backpacking gear up to the room. Then, we went out for our last dinner in Seattle, at Etta's on Pike Place Market. Like most other restaurants in Seattle, it was really good: Julie had a mussel appetizer and scallops (browned this time, unlike in Forks), and Ken had a grilled salmon steak.

Back in our hotel room, we watched The Three Musketeers on TV while we packed up our stuff. The hotel room — never big to begin with — was pretty full overnight.

Day 16: Saturday, October 6

Our flight wasn't until around 1:00pm, so we knew that we had plenty of time on Saturday morning. For breakfast, we walked down the street to a little French bakery we had seen a few times, called Belle Epecurian. Wow. The pastries were good, but the cappucino was fantastic, easily the best Ken has had since Italy. This is what cappucino is supposed to taste like.

By the time we were done with breakfast, we still had plenty of time. We hauled our stuff down to the car, checked out, and then decided to find the real Filson's. We found it, but were a bit underwhelmed. It's a lot like Duluth Pack — sturdy, expensive gear and clothes made of traditional materials like wool and canvas.

To kill some more time, we wandered through the discount outfitter next door, but we still had too much time on our hands. So, we decided to find Lake Washington. That turned out to be a mistake, and after 15 minutes of wrong turns, dead-ends and one-way streets, we gave up. Next, Julie decided to take us on the "scenic route" to the airport. That would have been fine, but the low gas light on the Jeep came on and we had no idea how much range we had left. Finding a gas station was an adventure, but at least the one we found turned out to be within 10 miles of the airport (to avoid a penalty from Dollar).

Eventually, we made it back to the car rental depot, dropped off the car, and caught a shuttle to the airport proper. Once we made it through security, we grabbed a quick lunch at a Manchu Wok and still had plenty of time to find our gate. The flight was uneventful, and the cab dropped us off at home around 7:00pm.