We left Mt Rainier on another perfect morning destined for
Olympic National Park. This included a quick trip to the beach – a windswept,
cold, misty beach clogged with huge dead trees. Bondi it was not. They recently
had a Japanese fishing village’s dock turn up as a result of the tsunami, and
are expecting more debris.
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| We've seen sandy beaches and rocky / pebbly beaches, and now a wooden one |
Further north, we passed through the town of Forks, where
the Twilight sagas are set (apparently – not being fans we have no clue about
this really). The tourist brochure was inspiring: “ Discover the magic of the
rainiest town in the contiguous US” and “Maybe catch a glimpse of a vampire or
werewolf”. Does a road-killed skunk count? We didn’t see any Twilightean
creatures, probably because of all the garlic, mirrors and silver daggers we
had festooned around the car. Or maybe because there aren’t any. In reality, Forks just looked like a dreary
logging town to us. Perhaps with all the logging going on the V & W community
(vampire and werewolf) has been significantly impacted by loss of habitat.
We stayed the night at Lake Crescent, a beautiful lake
surrounded by mountains. Apparently there are only 3 days of sunshine in
summer, and again our timing was impeccable in this regard. Next day was a busy
one, starting with a canoe jaunt on the lake. It was pretty windy so did a bit
of surfing while we were at it. We then drove up to Hurricane Ridge, which gave
us great views over the Olympic mountain range and down to the ocean. Hurricane
Ridge was surprisingly calm, not living up to its name at all.
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| Crescent Lake |
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| Did we say that driving near edges was fun! |
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| Hurricane Ridge |
We then took the ferry to Seattle and that’s when the fun
began! We disembarked right into the centre of Seattle downtown and a crazy
network of one-way streets some of which start off 1-way, are 2-way in the middle
and then 1-way again, or closed, or up an impossibly narrow street with cars
blocking the way. We eventually made it to our hotel (via Canada I think) and
had a brief respite before the next excursion. We had planned to go to Mars
Hill church in the evening and made an excellent plan using a variety of
mapping sources which assured us that the trip would take 9 minutes. We asked
the receptionist at the hotel, but apparently she teleports to work as she had
no clue. We set off, negotiating our way around the 1-way network aiming for
the freeway, only to find major roadworks and detours and road closures -
aarrrrggghhh. “Go right, no no left, back there, no sorry right, I said go
RIGHT, turn NOW, no not this one…. etc etc” Our GPS just gave up and sulked
after numerous “recalculating” attempts. We
arrived 50 minutes later in a lather of sweat and adrenalin, but made the start
of the service.
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| Mike gets wound up |
Our main comment about the service was that the music was
very LOUD. Did you hear that? It
was LOUD. We could actually feel the music in our chests. I got the
giggles (very inappropriate!) when I saw a very small baby fast asleep with a
pair of Bose headphones clamped to its head. What a dude.
We made it back to our hotel fairly painlessly after that
and managed to settle down with copious amounts of camomile tea and reminiscing
about the joy of the easy driving on winding mountain road with sheer edges.
To combat driving stress, Mike found it helpful to go to his
“happy place” which was all things aviation. We first went to the Boeing
Factory and did a tour. We saw Jetstar’s first 787 Dreamliner on the production
line, looks like it’s nearly finished. At a cool $206 million, we decided
against buying one this financial year. Even with Mike’s birthday coming up.
Next morning we had a scenic flight over Seattle in a Beaver seaplane, taking
off from Lake Union. We buzzed Bill Gates’ house, he didn’t come out and wave.
A visit to the Museum of Flight was also on the tour agenda, and this included
a look inside one of the Air Force One planes. They had a great section on the
Space Shuttle program including way too much information on how to go to the
toilet in space. Basically think of a vacuum cleaner (2 nozzles, ‘no 1’ and ‘no
2’) and you’re pretty much there.
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| "This is your Captain speaking, just sit back and relax.." |
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| What goes on in the space suit stays in the space suit |
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| Deirdre leaving Air Force One |
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| Space Potty |
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| Did you just see a mountain goat? |
Other Seattle-ite attractions included a trip up the Space
Needle (crappy weather so the view not so great) and to the amazing Chihuly
Exhibition. This exhibition is made up of incredible glass sculptures – we shall
let the photos tell the story. We also caught the monorail into the Downtown area
and Pike place market, passing by the world’s first Starbucks – we didn’t go in
as the queue was out the door, we just went to one around the corner and got in
easily. Coffee still tasted the same.
We have learned that we really have been out of the city for
too long and we’re out of practice. While there are many attractions, the argy
bargy was not to our liking, and we yearn for the wide open spaces of the
countryside. Give me a home where the buffalo roam…….. ( and I’ll show you a dirty lounge room).
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| That's not going on my toast |
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