Western Washington in 200 photos
May. 3rd, 2013 12:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
icepixieTrip report and photos below! Thumbnails are clickable to a 1024x768 size (and if for some reason you want the full 4320x3240 size of any of these, just comment with the file name and I'll send it to you; this goes for any of my photos, BTW). If you prefer to view all the pictures at once, go to this Flickr set. I'll warn you that those captions are basic and much more boring than the ones below.
Me getting attacked by a Dalek, among other pictures of that nature, will be coming in a later post.
Day One
Thursday started with some fail on Delta's part that led to us not actually getting to our hotel until about 4, and not into the city until nearly 5, but since we didn't have much planned and the light lasted until 8:30, that was okay. We met up with![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
rivendellrose and went wandering through the sculpture park along the waterfront, marveling at mountains (especially Rainier) and large salty bodies of water.
Mt. Rainier! And the port.
Bizarre art. You can't see it, but there's a statute of a young boy inside the right fountain. Possibly a representation of human sacrifice through drowning? Overseen by the aliens who landed on the Space Needle? I have no idea.
Mountains and Elliott Bay.
Cute street art.
I bought my first souvenir of the trip at Penzey's spices—Spanish smoked paprika, which I think will be delicious in chili.
We went up in the Columbia Center, which offers an excellent view of the city and surrounding countryside. Also of Rainier, which is hard to get away from.
Sun setting over Elliott Bay.
Space Needle.
Rainier again.
And again.
More bay, more mountains. Also a boat and a buoy.
Rainier and gorgeous weather.
Ellen taking photos.
I don't know what this building is, but I like it.
Bellevue, I think? A little outpost of Seattle to the east.
Ferry ferrying.
Sunset and mountains.
We went to Ivar's next to the bay for dinner, where I had the best clam chowder I've ever had (granted, my past experience has largely consisted of Campbell's, so I didn't have very high standards) and some truly excellent fish and chips.rivendellrose pointed out a seal paddling around in the bay, which was very cute.
Day Two
We began Friday at Pike Place Market, where I probably could've stayed all day, as it's huge and full of eccentric, fun stuff. We wandered through Left Bank Books, which had honest-to-god xeroxed 'zines for giveaway (assorted comics, poetry, and left-leaning political rants—some leaning so far left that they'd swung all the way around to the right—seemed to be the most popular). I thought the internet had destroyed that particular brand of activism, but, as in many ways, going to Seattle was a bit like stepping back into the early nineties. (In a good way! I liked the nineties.) I saw a pin with Amelia Earhart on it, and obviously had to have it.
Next up was The Crumpet Shop, which sold me a delicious crumpet with lemon curd on it. Mmmm. I followed it soon after with a beef and cheese piroshky, which was similarly delicious. I also got the biggest apple I've ever had in my life—seriously, it was as big as both my fists put together—which I saved for that afternoon, where it served practically as a meal. It was also delicious. I've not had much luck with Pacific Roses at home, but that one was amazing.
We found a fantastic poster shop, where I got a lovely, vaguely Art Noveauish one of a dancer dressed as a butterfly. We also wandered into a magic shop and got our fortune told by Elvis. He said I should "be careful about spending money impulsively," which was so helpful after dropping fifty cents on said fortune. Finally, I got a lavender sachet that was so powerful I had to quarantine it in a sandwich bag when we got back to the hotel, or our entire room would have reeked of lavender. I'm thinking perhaps I need to separate it into about five smaller sachets, and scatter them around the house.
The Market.
A preview of the tulipery to come on Monday.
Fish for sale. Very recently alive fish.
Crumpets!
Ellen's shadow over some cooling crumpets.
Elvis exploring a new line of work in fortune telling.
Sadly, I did not see an actual Giant Shoe Museum, just the mural.
We decamped to the Museum of Science Fiction by way of the monorail, which was not as different from regular rail as I was expecting. But it did provide some nice views of the city and saved us over a mile walk, so it was quite worth it.
Monorail tracks.
Going through the Experience Music Project.
More EMP. I assume Frank Gehry had a hand in this.
Space Needle.
More Space Needle.
At the sci-fi museum, we got to see...well, I'll just let the pictures speak for themselves:
Tribbles!
Uhura's costume.
Sheridan's EarthForce uniform! Wow, Bruce Boxleitner was a skinny guy in the mid-nineties.
Starbuck's totally-bought-at-Walmart clothes. Seriously, they couldn't at least have tried to get a Colonial Fleet uniform?
Superman.
TNG-era Star Trek weaponry. The fake blood on the bat'leth is an especially nice touch, I think.
Me dying a redshirt's death. (It is actually a TOS-era red shirt; my arm is covering the Starfleet insignia on the chest.)
Data's uniform.
Dalek.
Seriously, this thing was made out of plywood and putty.
laserhead, I took this picture especially for you.
Ellen lounging evilly in some kind of painful chair from Game of Thrones.
At this point, Ellen and I split up. I was tempted by the Chihuly museum, largely because it had a garden and the weather was gorgeous, but ultimately the Museum of Flight called louder. It was definitely fun; I did a lot of research on Earhart and early flight when I was starting my space pilots novel, and it was very cool to see a lot of the aircraft I'd read about. It was a bit of a retread of the Smithsonian's Air and Space Museum, but I had better context this time! They also had a lot of Soviet space program items, which definitely weren't at Air and Space. I have to say, their space food beats the pants off ours. Also, the Soyuz capsule is even tinier than the Mercury one, which I wasn't sure was possible.
I got to walk through a space shuttle, a Concorde, and the first Air Force One (Eisenhower-Nixon eras), which was also nifty. Also to see the first Boeing factory, which was...very similar to a barn. I gotta say, I have new appreciation for the phrase "flying by the seat of your pants," because those earliest airplanes really were basically a golf car motor and some balsa wood held together with twine and prayer. The first pilots were either very brave or very suicidal.
Amelia Earhart!
Seriously—balsa wood and a golf cart motor.
Space food. Yum.
Doesn't the Soviet space food look far more appetizing? "Vegetable paste" is maybe not great, but the rest of it looks actually edible.
Moon rover.
Sometimes I wish this was a thing everyone had, but then I think about how badly people drive, and imagine the death and destruction said bad driving would cause at 5,000 feet. Maaaaybe not.
Planes of various types.
Planes are light, but the ceiling must be very strong to hold up a DC-3.
A real plane. The Museum of Flight is adjacent to Boeing Field, which seems to serve as a military and general aviation airport.
Early air route map. I like the little passenger line between Bismarck and Minot. Aww.
I feel like we should have a resurgence of these things.
The original Boeing factory. BALSA WOOD AND GOLF CART MOTORS.
We rejoined for dinner at Georgetown Liquor Company, which is a vegetarian bar. I had a "Wrap of Khan" (all the menu items had pop culture/sci-fi names), which was...I'm pretty sure I had a vegan Slim Jim in a wrap. It was "Field Roast" in some kind of spicy marinade with cheese, spicy mayonnaise, and vegetables. Tasty, but extremely reminiscent of a Slim Jim.
Day Three
Saturday morning, we picked up our rental car. Very exciting! I've driven a car rented by my parents before, but never one in my own name. Our first stop was Safeway, where we got enough hummus, pita, yogurt, and fruit for an army, and in the foam cooler we got, it served us well for lunches (and occasionally dinner) over the next three days. Not that I don't enjoy vacations involving public transit, but having a car definitely has its advantages as well.
We then set out on I-90 for Roslyn, aka Cicely, Alaska. It's changed quite a bit in the 20 years since Northern Exposure was on, but many of the landmarks remain: the Roslyn's Café mural, the Brick, KBHR, Joel's office (which has been turned into an NX-themed gift shop), and assorted shops on Main Street, like Harper's Lumber and Village Pizza. We also drove by Maggie's first house and what I think is the Cicely church. Not sure, though.
It was very, very reminiscent of Gambier, except a bit bigger, and with more attractive houses. (Seriously, the houses in Washington are uniformly beautiful. I want clapboard in all manner of attractive colors out here rather than just brick and vinyl!)
KBHR!
They've left the radio booth exactly as it was. Fun times.
The Brick!
Roslyn's Café mural! When the show ended, they removed the apostrophe-s, restoring it to its original condition.
The town had an abundance of vintage vehicles. Not really sure why.
Main Street!
Joel's name is still there. I think he would probably disapprove of his office waiting room being turned into a gift shop, though.
Eeee!
Totem pole that featured in several episodes.
More mural.
More Brick.
Yet more Brick.
Last shot of the town. I assume the lovely shots in the show from this direction that appear to be taken from way up high were done from a crane, because there's no high point near where I'm standing.
Maggie's first house, the one that burned down.
Cicely Community Church? Not sure.
The town was exhausted pretty quickly, so we ventured onto the Coal Mines trail, which runs from Roslyn to Cle Elum in one direction. There were nice trees—it was fun and very X-Files to be surrounded by so many evergreens—but other than that it was a bit unexciting, so we went on to Cle Elum Lake hoping for a picnic. It's a very pretty lake, with attractive mountains in the background, but ultimately it was too windy and cold to sit around outside, so we had a car picnic instead. Another advantage of having your own transportation! All of our picnics turned into car picnics.
Treeeees.
More trees. Western Red Cedar, apparently.
Odd pumpkin-shaped seeds. Would love to know what they are.
Snow on further mountains.
Trees. And stumps. Makes me glad my house is not heated entirely by wood.
The perfect Christmas tree!
Cle Elum Lake
Note that these waves are occurring in a lake, not the ocean. It was quite windy indeed.
Having more of the afternoon available than we expected, we decided to get back to Seattle in time for the last Seattle Underground tour. Because it was on the way back and supposed to be pretty, we first stopped off at Snoqualmie Falls. (Twin Peaks was filmed in the town of Snoqualmie, FYI.) It was indeed gorgeous, and much bigger than I expected.
Purty.
More purty.
I think we made a wise choice not to come here in winter.
I drove us back into Seattle for the underground tour. May I just say, I'd heard Seattle traffic was terrible, don't ever drive there, etc. etc., but in actuality, it was not nearly that bad. Everyone drives so politely! They let you over in traffic and use their turn signals! Swear to god, on one bit of interstate where a lane was closed, I thought a bunch of people had their hazard lights on, because they were all using their turn signals to get over. In Nashville, the few people who actually bother signaling tend to do it perhaps halfway through their lane change, because it's so helpful at that point.
Anyway, the underground tour was interesting. Seattle was first built on sawdust-based landfill over some tidal flats, engineering apparently not being one of the city fathers' strong suits. Over the years, between the sea and the earthquakes and a few fires, the city subsided to the point where the second floors of buildings became the de facto first floors, leaving a warren of underground buildings and walkways under 25 blocks of the oldest part of the city. Said warren quickly became the city's red light district, not to mention opium district. This page explains the tour in more detail.
Totem pole in Pioneer Square.
Bus shelter, I think?
Lamppost.
In the Underground.
Afterward, we had dinner at the Ferry Noodle House. The pad thai was the one disappointment, foodwise, of the trip, but the chicken satay was out of this world. Nommmm.
Day Four
Sunday, we started off in Fremont because we wanted to see the Fremont Troll, one of the many pieces of public art in that section of the city. We saw more cute houses and gardens, wandered through the Sunday Market, and stopped in an organic grocery store, which sold me a chai-flavored chocolate bar. Even random grocery-store candy bars were amazing in this city.
The Troll. Yes, he lives under a bridge. And he's crushing a real VW Bug, because why not?
Attractive sidewalk and random Buckeye tree.
Tulips.
Someone has an excellent garden.
The only signpost you need, obviously.
It kind of goes on forever.
After that, we headed out to Lake Twenty-two. Basically, you claw your way 2.7 miles (and 1300 feet in elevation gain) up a mountain to look at a lake surrounded by taller and more imposing mountains. In retrospect, had I known then what I know now about the condition of the top third of the trail, I would not have continued hiking once we reached the snowy bits. People apparently hike this trail in winter, using what I can only assume must be snowshoes. And possibly GPS to find the trail, because we were uncertain in a couple of places despite the layer of footprints from hikers before us.
We did persevere, though. Our battle cries were, alternately, "We've come this far!", "How much further can it be?" and, after seeing a dog go by in the other direction, "If a Pomeranian can do it, we can do it!" We conveniently forgot the fact that Pomeranians are rather smaller and lighter than us. I did fall through a rotten patch in the snow once (luckily it was up near the lake, not on the side of the cliff) and sank one leg all the way up to my hip. Thankfully Ellen was there to pull me out. I also slipped and fell straight on my butt once, again thankfully not on a particularly narrow part of the trail. By the time we returned, my boots were soaked from all the snow that had collected in them, and my pants were wet halfway up the thighs.
Anyway: we didn't die. We didn't even sprain anything. That's the really important part. (Even though five days later, my knees are still protesting the downhill portion...)
One of the first waterfalls.
I present to you: the trail. No, really. Personally, I would call that a stream rather than a trail, but obviously the National Forest Service has a different opinion.
Not the trail. But I think it's telling that I had to think about it for a while before I could recall if this was so.
Again, the trail. (Haha, oh, if only we knew that this was the easy part.)
Someone attempted a bridge. Apparently the forest revolted.
Incredible amounts of moss. The dampness here does not joke around.
Mossssssssssss. It was very reminiscent of that early X-Files episode where Mulder and Scully go into the woods in search of loggers who are getting wrapped up in the cocoons of man-eating spiders, or whatever it was.
Not the trail, thankfully.
Also not the trail.
It is a pretty waterfall, though.
Ellen marveling at tall trees.
Very possibly the devil marked this trail. I would not be surprised.
Giant waterfall!
Mountain detritus.
The moss almost looks liquid here.
Stairs provided for scale against the large tree.
Mountain vista.
Mountain vista with rain in the distance.
"This isn't a trail, it's a rock field!"
Trail of tears, perhaps...
Creepy trees.
Apparently I did take a picture of the place where we really should've turned back, but this in no way conveys its sheer, pants-wetting terror. Imagine the mountain continuing down to the left and the snowbank up to the right, both at, oh, let's call it 75-degree angles. For hundreds of feet, especially on the downward slope.
...and now I'm starting to have a baby panic attack just remembering that, so we're going to move on.
That would be, again, the trail. And we're not even to the really snowy part.
Man or mountain goat? You decide!
Snowy and terrifying as it was, it was also very pretty up there.
...I don't think anyone's going to the toilet up here today. I assume there's a shack with a pit toilet under all that snow, but who knows, really?
Approaching the lake...
Lake Twenty Two! We made it!
It's impossible to convey the immensity of this place through photography. The rock wall in the background is 250 feet high. The evergreens up against it simply don't show the scale. The lake was also quite a bit bigger than this or my other pictures seem to indicate (here it looks like a pond—it's not). You can circumnavigate it in summer on a trail that's a little more than a mile long.
Its also impossible to convey how still and silent it was. Imagine the silence after a snowstorm in civilization, and multiply it by ten. It was like walking on the moon, almost.
Bridge!fail. It looks like there's a tunnel through the snow at the end of the bridge. There isn't.
More lake. After all the difficulty getting up here, I'm posting every hard-won picture I took.
Do snowbanks grow rings like trees?
I guess in theory you could jump down to the bridge from the snow, but I wouldn't want to try it.
We started at noon, and returned to the car at about 4:30. We contemplated further adventures in Seattle for about a nanosecond, then decided that we were much too tired and bedraggled for that. Plus I still had about an acre of pad thai left over, and we planned to get up at 5:45 the next morning to beat rush hour traffic. On all fronts, it was a wise decision to return early to the hotel.
Day Five
Sunday, we again went north. I camped out in the HOV and express lanes of I-5, which were a novelty (we do have HOV lanes, but not on the interstate I take to work, and express lanes—which are a different animal involving actual separation from the rest of the interstate—are completely unheard of here).
Our first stop was the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival. It's basically a collection of tulip (and daffodil) farms with attractive mountain backdrops, plus one largeish tulip garden. We found...part of a tulip field. Obviously the height of the season was earlier in the month. Still, the garden was gorgeous and more than made up for the lack of fields, and what part of the field we found was big enough to make for some good pictures.
Crazy cabbage-headed tulips.
Colorful!
The mountain backdrops were especially impressive.
Someone with a really good knack for color theory planted these gardens.
Rhododendrons are also in bloom now, apparently.
Daffodils and tulips. My favorite two flowers all in one place!
Baby windmill. Aww.
Baby windmill's big brother.
I really liked these lily-flowering tulips.
"Flaming Parrot" tulips. WANT.
The little path of grape hyacinths through the tulips is cute.
Hee.
These are called "aperitif." I love how they look like a sunrise.
Cherry trees are still going strong here.
Tulip field!
I believe after tulips, the Skagit Valley's other chief export may be mud.
We continued on to Deception Pass State Park, which features an attractive bridge from Fidalgo Island to Whidbey Island. It is also an extremely windy bridge. Shockingly enough, having mountains on the north and south sides of a pass, when the prevailing winds come from the west, creates a very large wind tunnel effect. In addition to driving across the bridge, you can walk across it, but I quite literally feared for my life thanks to that wind, so I declined to go further than a few steps. I took the trail down to the rocky beach below, which was a bit less windy—in that it felt like a very stiff breeze rather than Dartmoor levels of wind.
A boat, a forest, some snow-capped mountains...I love a region that lets me get all of these things in one photograph.
The beach from above.
Driftwood! I'll just claim the odd lighting is natural rather than an effect of me having my ND filter on the wrong way...
Bridge from below.
Bridge, rocks, water.
Shells! I thought about collecting, but I'm pretty sure they were inhabited.
Bivalves of some kind.
Under the bridge.
We finished up the day in Anacortes, which is a cute little touristy town where a lot of ferries leave for the San Juan Islands. There are also ferries to Victoria, BC, and thus signs in several shops saying "Anacortes welcomes our Canadian neighbors!", indicating, I assume, that they welcome Canadian currency. We spent some time in a bookstore, of course—that was a bit of a theme on this trip—and I got this book. So pretty.
Outside the bookstore. Bigfoot needs something to read too!
We ate another outstanding meal at Adrift (logo: "swell food"). I've never actually had fish tacos before, and the halibut ones were an excellent introduction. They had a fun collection of local posters in their bathroom, one of which, for a rock concert, read something along the lines of, "Because Anacortes is a land of riches and we are a hearty people and winter is coming, this concert will also serve as our seasonal civic meeting." I love tiny little towns like this.
After dinner, we went to Washington Park, which is a city park on a peninsula sticking into the sea (well, Strait of Juan de Fuca, I suppose). The sunset over the water was, as you'll see, fantastic.
I assume these are the Olympic Mountains, over the on the Olympic Peninsula. (We're still basically staring out at a sound rather than straight ocean.)
Sunset. Gorgeous, gorgeous sunset.
Ellen in her natural pose. Note how bundled up she is. It was very cold out there, but so worth it.
The waves come in, the waves go out...
Trees and ocean.
Cute wildflowers and an island.
A ferry, I think.
I feel like a flight of angels would not go amiss here.
More big trees! Also, this was the road. So glad I wasn't driving this part.
Sunset grows ever pinker.
Now we're sort of looking back toward Anacortes (it's off to the left).
Ellen was really after the best view possible.
Washington Park features some rather friendly deer. Well, maybe not friendly in the sense that they would eat out of your hand or anything like that (I'm pretty sure I wouldn't want to get that close to a deer anyway, as I like not having disease-bearing ticks bite me), but they definitely didn't care that we were standing three feet away taking their pictures. There were about six total, but by this point it was so dark that this was the only picture that turned out even a bit.
One last shot of sunset.
And then we made the long drive back to the hotel, got up in the morning, and flew back home. I changed planes in Salt Lake City, where I've never been, and...well, Salt Lake has some very impressive mountains.
This was actually at SeaTac. I would like stamps for Mars, Venus, Saturn, and the moon on my passport, please! I have no idea how this company, which appears to make software, can help me get them, but apparently they can.
And finally, my pack of souvenirs:
The cards are especially cute. The light was reflecting off the lower one's plastic cover, so it's hard to see, but it's a squirrel in a roller skate pulled by a magpie. The squirrel is holding a stick with a foil ball attached to it in front of the magpie, who is eagerly chasing it. The title is "Foiled Again," which is probably the reason I bought that card. It and the one with the wren on the stack of books are by the same artist, who did them in colored pencil, dear god.
Well, there weren't any signs saying I couldn't take some pretty rocks from the beach...
KBHR T-shirt! If you can't read it, it says, "Chris in the Morning" on top, followed by "Coffee, Commentary, Kafka," and then at the bottom, "570 AM, Cicely, Alaska."
Yay Seattle! I very much enjoyed my whole time in Washington, and would contemplate moving there but for a.) liking my current place of employment, and b.) knowing that the great weather we had was an aberration, and I just can't deal with gloom. But it's a delightful area. I'd like to visit again one day.
Me getting attacked by a Dalek, among other pictures of that nature, will be coming in a later post.
Day One
Thursday started with some fail on Delta's part that led to us not actually getting to our hotel until about 4, and not into the city until nearly 5, but since we didn't have much planned and the light lasted until 8:30, that was okay. We met up with
rivendellrose and went wandering through the sculpture park along the waterfront, marveling at mountains (especially Rainier) and large salty bodies of water.
Mt. Rainier! And the port.
Bizarre art. You can't see it, but there's a statute of a young boy inside the right fountain. Possibly a representation of human sacrifice through drowning? Overseen by the aliens who landed on the Space Needle? I have no idea.
Mountains and Elliott Bay.
Cute street art.
I bought my first souvenir of the trip at Penzey's spices—Spanish smoked paprika, which I think will be delicious in chili.
We went up in the Columbia Center, which offers an excellent view of the city and surrounding countryside. Also of Rainier, which is hard to get away from.
Sun setting over Elliott Bay.
Space Needle.
Rainier again.
And again.
More bay, more mountains. Also a boat and a buoy.
Rainier and gorgeous weather.
Ellen taking photos.
I don't know what this building is, but I like it.
Bellevue, I think? A little outpost of Seattle to the east.
Ferry ferrying.
Sunset and mountains.
We went to Ivar's next to the bay for dinner, where I had the best clam chowder I've ever had (granted, my past experience has largely consisted of Campbell's, so I didn't have very high standards) and some truly excellent fish and chips.
rivendellrose pointed out a seal paddling around in the bay, which was very cute.Day Two
We began Friday at Pike Place Market, where I probably could've stayed all day, as it's huge and full of eccentric, fun stuff. We wandered through Left Bank Books, which had honest-to-god xeroxed 'zines for giveaway (assorted comics, poetry, and left-leaning political rants—some leaning so far left that they'd swung all the way around to the right—seemed to be the most popular). I thought the internet had destroyed that particular brand of activism, but, as in many ways, going to Seattle was a bit like stepping back into the early nineties. (In a good way! I liked the nineties.) I saw a pin with Amelia Earhart on it, and obviously had to have it.
Next up was The Crumpet Shop, which sold me a delicious crumpet with lemon curd on it. Mmmm. I followed it soon after with a beef and cheese piroshky, which was similarly delicious. I also got the biggest apple I've ever had in my life—seriously, it was as big as both my fists put together—which I saved for that afternoon, where it served practically as a meal. It was also delicious. I've not had much luck with Pacific Roses at home, but that one was amazing.
We found a fantastic poster shop, where I got a lovely, vaguely Art Noveauish one of a dancer dressed as a butterfly. We also wandered into a magic shop and got our fortune told by Elvis. He said I should "be careful about spending money impulsively," which was so helpful after dropping fifty cents on said fortune. Finally, I got a lavender sachet that was so powerful I had to quarantine it in a sandwich bag when we got back to the hotel, or our entire room would have reeked of lavender. I'm thinking perhaps I need to separate it into about five smaller sachets, and scatter them around the house.
The Market.
A preview of the tulipery to come on Monday.
Fish for sale. Very recently alive fish.
Crumpets!
Ellen's shadow over some cooling crumpets.
Elvis exploring a new line of work in fortune telling.
Sadly, I did not see an actual Giant Shoe Museum, just the mural.
We decamped to the Museum of Science Fiction by way of the monorail, which was not as different from regular rail as I was expecting. But it did provide some nice views of the city and saved us over a mile walk, so it was quite worth it.
Monorail tracks.
Going through the Experience Music Project.
More EMP. I assume Frank Gehry had a hand in this.
Space Needle.
More Space Needle.
At the sci-fi museum, we got to see...well, I'll just let the pictures speak for themselves:
Tribbles!
Uhura's costume.
Sheridan's EarthForce uniform! Wow, Bruce Boxleitner was a skinny guy in the mid-nineties.
Starbuck's totally-bought-at-Walmart clothes. Seriously, they couldn't at least have tried to get a Colonial Fleet uniform?
Superman.
TNG-era Star Trek weaponry. The fake blood on the bat'leth is an especially nice touch, I think.
Me dying a redshirt's death. (It is actually a TOS-era red shirt; my arm is covering the Starfleet insignia on the chest.)
Data's uniform.
Dalek.
Seriously, this thing was made out of plywood and putty.
laserhead, I took this picture especially for you.
Ellen lounging evilly in some kind of painful chair from Game of Thrones.
At this point, Ellen and I split up. I was tempted by the Chihuly museum, largely because it had a garden and the weather was gorgeous, but ultimately the Museum of Flight called louder. It was definitely fun; I did a lot of research on Earhart and early flight when I was starting my space pilots novel, and it was very cool to see a lot of the aircraft I'd read about. It was a bit of a retread of the Smithsonian's Air and Space Museum, but I had better context this time! They also had a lot of Soviet space program items, which definitely weren't at Air and Space. I have to say, their space food beats the pants off ours. Also, the Soyuz capsule is even tinier than the Mercury one, which I wasn't sure was possible.
I got to walk through a space shuttle, a Concorde, and the first Air Force One (Eisenhower-Nixon eras), which was also nifty. Also to see the first Boeing factory, which was...very similar to a barn. I gotta say, I have new appreciation for the phrase "flying by the seat of your pants," because those earliest airplanes really were basically a golf car motor and some balsa wood held together with twine and prayer. The first pilots were either very brave or very suicidal.
Amelia Earhart!
Seriously—balsa wood and a golf cart motor.
Space food. Yum.
Doesn't the Soviet space food look far more appetizing? "Vegetable paste" is maybe not great, but the rest of it looks actually edible.
Moon rover.
Sometimes I wish this was a thing everyone had, but then I think about how badly people drive, and imagine the death and destruction said bad driving would cause at 5,000 feet. Maaaaybe not.
Planes of various types.
Planes are light, but the ceiling must be very strong to hold up a DC-3.
A real plane. The Museum of Flight is adjacent to Boeing Field, which seems to serve as a military and general aviation airport.
Early air route map. I like the little passenger line between Bismarck and Minot. Aww.
I feel like we should have a resurgence of these things.
The original Boeing factory. BALSA WOOD AND GOLF CART MOTORS.
We rejoined for dinner at Georgetown Liquor Company, which is a vegetarian bar. I had a "Wrap of Khan" (all the menu items had pop culture/sci-fi names), which was...I'm pretty sure I had a vegan Slim Jim in a wrap. It was "Field Roast" in some kind of spicy marinade with cheese, spicy mayonnaise, and vegetables. Tasty, but extremely reminiscent of a Slim Jim.
Day Three
Saturday morning, we picked up our rental car. Very exciting! I've driven a car rented by my parents before, but never one in my own name. Our first stop was Safeway, where we got enough hummus, pita, yogurt, and fruit for an army, and in the foam cooler we got, it served us well for lunches (and occasionally dinner) over the next three days. Not that I don't enjoy vacations involving public transit, but having a car definitely has its advantages as well.
We then set out on I-90 for Roslyn, aka Cicely, Alaska. It's changed quite a bit in the 20 years since Northern Exposure was on, but many of the landmarks remain: the Roslyn's Café mural, the Brick, KBHR, Joel's office (which has been turned into an NX-themed gift shop), and assorted shops on Main Street, like Harper's Lumber and Village Pizza. We also drove by Maggie's first house and what I think is the Cicely church. Not sure, though.
It was very, very reminiscent of Gambier, except a bit bigger, and with more attractive houses. (Seriously, the houses in Washington are uniformly beautiful. I want clapboard in all manner of attractive colors out here rather than just brick and vinyl!)
KBHR!
They've left the radio booth exactly as it was. Fun times.
The Brick!
Roslyn's Café mural! When the show ended, they removed the apostrophe-s, restoring it to its original condition.
The town had an abundance of vintage vehicles. Not really sure why.
Main Street!
Joel's name is still there. I think he would probably disapprove of his office waiting room being turned into a gift shop, though.
Eeee!
Totem pole that featured in several episodes.
More mural.
More Brick.
Yet more Brick.
Last shot of the town. I assume the lovely shots in the show from this direction that appear to be taken from way up high were done from a crane, because there's no high point near where I'm standing.
Maggie's first house, the one that burned down.
Cicely Community Church? Not sure.
The town was exhausted pretty quickly, so we ventured onto the Coal Mines trail, which runs from Roslyn to Cle Elum in one direction. There were nice trees—it was fun and very X-Files to be surrounded by so many evergreens—but other than that it was a bit unexciting, so we went on to Cle Elum Lake hoping for a picnic. It's a very pretty lake, with attractive mountains in the background, but ultimately it was too windy and cold to sit around outside, so we had a car picnic instead. Another advantage of having your own transportation! All of our picnics turned into car picnics.
Treeeees.
More trees. Western Red Cedar, apparently.
Odd pumpkin-shaped seeds. Would love to know what they are.
Snow on further mountains.
Trees. And stumps. Makes me glad my house is not heated entirely by wood.
The perfect Christmas tree!
Cle Elum Lake
Note that these waves are occurring in a lake, not the ocean. It was quite windy indeed.
Having more of the afternoon available than we expected, we decided to get back to Seattle in time for the last Seattle Underground tour. Because it was on the way back and supposed to be pretty, we first stopped off at Snoqualmie Falls. (Twin Peaks was filmed in the town of Snoqualmie, FYI.) It was indeed gorgeous, and much bigger than I expected.
Purty.
More purty.
I think we made a wise choice not to come here in winter.
I drove us back into Seattle for the underground tour. May I just say, I'd heard Seattle traffic was terrible, don't ever drive there, etc. etc., but in actuality, it was not nearly that bad. Everyone drives so politely! They let you over in traffic and use their turn signals! Swear to god, on one bit of interstate where a lane was closed, I thought a bunch of people had their hazard lights on, because they were all using their turn signals to get over. In Nashville, the few people who actually bother signaling tend to do it perhaps halfway through their lane change, because it's so helpful at that point.
Anyway, the underground tour was interesting. Seattle was first built on sawdust-based landfill over some tidal flats, engineering apparently not being one of the city fathers' strong suits. Over the years, between the sea and the earthquakes and a few fires, the city subsided to the point where the second floors of buildings became the de facto first floors, leaving a warren of underground buildings and walkways under 25 blocks of the oldest part of the city. Said warren quickly became the city's red light district, not to mention opium district. This page explains the tour in more detail.
Totem pole in Pioneer Square.
Bus shelter, I think?
Lamppost.
In the Underground.
Afterward, we had dinner at the Ferry Noodle House. The pad thai was the one disappointment, foodwise, of the trip, but the chicken satay was out of this world. Nommmm.
Day Four
Sunday, we started off in Fremont because we wanted to see the Fremont Troll, one of the many pieces of public art in that section of the city. We saw more cute houses and gardens, wandered through the Sunday Market, and stopped in an organic grocery store, which sold me a chai-flavored chocolate bar. Even random grocery-store candy bars were amazing in this city.
The Troll. Yes, he lives under a bridge. And he's crushing a real VW Bug, because why not?
Attractive sidewalk and random Buckeye tree.
Tulips.
Someone has an excellent garden.
The only signpost you need, obviously.
It kind of goes on forever.
After that, we headed out to Lake Twenty-two. Basically, you claw your way 2.7 miles (and 1300 feet in elevation gain) up a mountain to look at a lake surrounded by taller and more imposing mountains. In retrospect, had I known then what I know now about the condition of the top third of the trail, I would not have continued hiking once we reached the snowy bits. People apparently hike this trail in winter, using what I can only assume must be snowshoes. And possibly GPS to find the trail, because we were uncertain in a couple of places despite the layer of footprints from hikers before us.
We did persevere, though. Our battle cries were, alternately, "We've come this far!", "How much further can it be?" and, after seeing a dog go by in the other direction, "If a Pomeranian can do it, we can do it!" We conveniently forgot the fact that Pomeranians are rather smaller and lighter than us. I did fall through a rotten patch in the snow once (luckily it was up near the lake, not on the side of the cliff) and sank one leg all the way up to my hip. Thankfully Ellen was there to pull me out. I also slipped and fell straight on my butt once, again thankfully not on a particularly narrow part of the trail. By the time we returned, my boots were soaked from all the snow that had collected in them, and my pants were wet halfway up the thighs.
Anyway: we didn't die. We didn't even sprain anything. That's the really important part. (Even though five days later, my knees are still protesting the downhill portion...)
One of the first waterfalls.
I present to you: the trail. No, really. Personally, I would call that a stream rather than a trail, but obviously the National Forest Service has a different opinion.
Not the trail. But I think it's telling that I had to think about it for a while before I could recall if this was so.
Again, the trail. (Haha, oh, if only we knew that this was the easy part.)
Someone attempted a bridge. Apparently the forest revolted.
Incredible amounts of moss. The dampness here does not joke around.
Mossssssssssss. It was very reminiscent of that early X-Files episode where Mulder and Scully go into the woods in search of loggers who are getting wrapped up in the cocoons of man-eating spiders, or whatever it was.
Not the trail, thankfully.
Also not the trail.
It is a pretty waterfall, though.
Ellen marveling at tall trees.
Very possibly the devil marked this trail. I would not be surprised.
Giant waterfall!
Mountain detritus.
The moss almost looks liquid here.
Stairs provided for scale against the large tree.
Mountain vista.
Mountain vista with rain in the distance.
"This isn't a trail, it's a rock field!"
Trail of tears, perhaps...
Creepy trees.
Apparently I did take a picture of the place where we really should've turned back, but this in no way conveys its sheer, pants-wetting terror. Imagine the mountain continuing down to the left and the snowbank up to the right, both at, oh, let's call it 75-degree angles. For hundreds of feet, especially on the downward slope.
...and now I'm starting to have a baby panic attack just remembering that, so we're going to move on.
That would be, again, the trail. And we're not even to the really snowy part.
Man or mountain goat? You decide!
Snowy and terrifying as it was, it was also very pretty up there.
...I don't think anyone's going to the toilet up here today. I assume there's a shack with a pit toilet under all that snow, but who knows, really?
Approaching the lake...
Lake Twenty Two! We made it!
It's impossible to convey the immensity of this place through photography. The rock wall in the background is 250 feet high. The evergreens up against it simply don't show the scale. The lake was also quite a bit bigger than this or my other pictures seem to indicate (here it looks like a pond—it's not). You can circumnavigate it in summer on a trail that's a little more than a mile long.
Its also impossible to convey how still and silent it was. Imagine the silence after a snowstorm in civilization, and multiply it by ten. It was like walking on the moon, almost.
Bridge!fail. It looks like there's a tunnel through the snow at the end of the bridge. There isn't.
More lake. After all the difficulty getting up here, I'm posting every hard-won picture I took.
Do snowbanks grow rings like trees?
I guess in theory you could jump down to the bridge from the snow, but I wouldn't want to try it.
We started at noon, and returned to the car at about 4:30. We contemplated further adventures in Seattle for about a nanosecond, then decided that we were much too tired and bedraggled for that. Plus I still had about an acre of pad thai left over, and we planned to get up at 5:45 the next morning to beat rush hour traffic. On all fronts, it was a wise decision to return early to the hotel.
Day Five
Sunday, we again went north. I camped out in the HOV and express lanes of I-5, which were a novelty (we do have HOV lanes, but not on the interstate I take to work, and express lanes—which are a different animal involving actual separation from the rest of the interstate—are completely unheard of here).
Our first stop was the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival. It's basically a collection of tulip (and daffodil) farms with attractive mountain backdrops, plus one largeish tulip garden. We found...part of a tulip field. Obviously the height of the season was earlier in the month. Still, the garden was gorgeous and more than made up for the lack of fields, and what part of the field we found was big enough to make for some good pictures.
Crazy cabbage-headed tulips.
Colorful!
The mountain backdrops were especially impressive.
Someone with a really good knack for color theory planted these gardens.
Rhododendrons are also in bloom now, apparently.
Daffodils and tulips. My favorite two flowers all in one place!
Baby windmill. Aww.
Baby windmill's big brother.
I really liked these lily-flowering tulips.
"Flaming Parrot" tulips. WANT.
The little path of grape hyacinths through the tulips is cute.
Hee.
These are called "aperitif." I love how they look like a sunrise.
Cherry trees are still going strong here.
Tulip field!
I believe after tulips, the Skagit Valley's other chief export may be mud.
We continued on to Deception Pass State Park, which features an attractive bridge from Fidalgo Island to Whidbey Island. It is also an extremely windy bridge. Shockingly enough, having mountains on the north and south sides of a pass, when the prevailing winds come from the west, creates a very large wind tunnel effect. In addition to driving across the bridge, you can walk across it, but I quite literally feared for my life thanks to that wind, so I declined to go further than a few steps. I took the trail down to the rocky beach below, which was a bit less windy—in that it felt like a very stiff breeze rather than Dartmoor levels of wind.
A boat, a forest, some snow-capped mountains...I love a region that lets me get all of these things in one photograph.
The beach from above.
Driftwood! I'll just claim the odd lighting is natural rather than an effect of me having my ND filter on the wrong way...
Bridge from below.
Bridge, rocks, water.
Shells! I thought about collecting, but I'm pretty sure they were inhabited.
Bivalves of some kind.
Under the bridge.
We finished up the day in Anacortes, which is a cute little touristy town where a lot of ferries leave for the San Juan Islands. There are also ferries to Victoria, BC, and thus signs in several shops saying "Anacortes welcomes our Canadian neighbors!", indicating, I assume, that they welcome Canadian currency. We spent some time in a bookstore, of course—that was a bit of a theme on this trip—and I got this book. So pretty.
Outside the bookstore. Bigfoot needs something to read too!
We ate another outstanding meal at Adrift (logo: "swell food"). I've never actually had fish tacos before, and the halibut ones were an excellent introduction. They had a fun collection of local posters in their bathroom, one of which, for a rock concert, read something along the lines of, "Because Anacortes is a land of riches and we are a hearty people and winter is coming, this concert will also serve as our seasonal civic meeting." I love tiny little towns like this.
After dinner, we went to Washington Park, which is a city park on a peninsula sticking into the sea (well, Strait of Juan de Fuca, I suppose). The sunset over the water was, as you'll see, fantastic.
I assume these are the Olympic Mountains, over the on the Olympic Peninsula. (We're still basically staring out at a sound rather than straight ocean.)
Sunset. Gorgeous, gorgeous sunset.
Ellen in her natural pose. Note how bundled up she is. It was very cold out there, but so worth it.
The waves come in, the waves go out...
Trees and ocean.
Cute wildflowers and an island.
A ferry, I think.
I feel like a flight of angels would not go amiss here.
More big trees! Also, this was the road. So glad I wasn't driving this part.
Sunset grows ever pinker.
Now we're sort of looking back toward Anacortes (it's off to the left).
Ellen was really after the best view possible.
Washington Park features some rather friendly deer. Well, maybe not friendly in the sense that they would eat out of your hand or anything like that (I'm pretty sure I wouldn't want to get that close to a deer anyway, as I like not having disease-bearing ticks bite me), but they definitely didn't care that we were standing three feet away taking their pictures. There were about six total, but by this point it was so dark that this was the only picture that turned out even a bit.
One last shot of sunset.
And then we made the long drive back to the hotel, got up in the morning, and flew back home. I changed planes in Salt Lake City, where I've never been, and...well, Salt Lake has some very impressive mountains.
This was actually at SeaTac. I would like stamps for Mars, Venus, Saturn, and the moon on my passport, please! I have no idea how this company, which appears to make software, can help me get them, but apparently they can.
And finally, my pack of souvenirs:
The cards are especially cute. The light was reflecting off the lower one's plastic cover, so it's hard to see, but it's a squirrel in a roller skate pulled by a magpie. The squirrel is holding a stick with a foil ball attached to it in front of the magpie, who is eagerly chasing it. The title is "Foiled Again," which is probably the reason I bought that card. It and the one with the wren on the stack of books are by the same artist, who did them in colored pencil, dear god.
Well, there weren't any signs saying I couldn't take some pretty rocks from the beach...
KBHR T-shirt! If you can't read it, it says, "Chris in the Morning" on top, followed by "Coffee, Commentary, Kafka," and then at the bottom, "570 AM, Cicely, Alaska."
Yay Seattle! I very much enjoyed my whole time in Washington, and would contemplate moving there but for a.) liking my current place of employment, and b.) knowing that the great weather we had was an aberration, and I just can't deal with gloom. But it's a delightful area. I'd like to visit again one day.
