Okay I know Seattle isn't a forest preserve, but there are lots of forests there and I did do a lot of walking. I am assuming this blog of mine will morph into something other than walking forests preserve eventually anyway, so I will add my thoughts about our trip to Seattle. Tom and I had a great time! Seattle was wonderful, it was comfortable with lots of things to do and see and full of friendly people. We bought the City Pass that gets you into like 6 different attractions, it saves you 50%, so if you visit 3 places, you have covered the cost of the pass. We did the Space Needle, Experience Music Project, Science Fiction Museum, Seattle Aquarium, Science Center, and an Argosy Cruse of Elliot Bay. The only pass we didn't use was for the Woodland Zoo and so I would highly recommend getting the City Pass to anyone visiting Seattle.
We loved all of the places in Seattle, the Space Needle was really high and we had no idea the elevators were on the outside of the tower. We sat up there at a table for awhile to get our bearings before going outside onto the ring, wow, what a view! The Experience Music Project was awesome! They have this electronic drum table that I would love to have, it played a steady beat and then had about 8 different African drums that you could hit to add to the beat. It was flat, so if I had my own, it would be like my breakfast room table for sure. The Aquarium was cool, you could touch the anemones and starfish and the butterfly house at the Science Center was really big and filled with a ton of butterflies; we had to be careful not to step on them or take them home on our clothing. The Argosy Cruise was wonderful and gave us a great view of Seattle and all the ships. We learned so much about Seattle from the cruise director and they take a nice picture of you as you board and then conveniently have them ready for purchase when you disembark. As a huge grunge fan, I had to see the Kurt Cobain exhibit at the Seattle Art Museum. It was interactive and had music and video, but no photos please. Andy Warhol was also being featured and I thought some of his work was really great and reminded me of how much I will miss my deaf kids and of the Andy Warhol pop art we did together. I took pictures of their hearing aids and then printed each students ears, four of them on a page and the kids color them however they wanted.
One of the best days on our trip was driving north to Anacortes and then ferrying over to San Juan Island. We took our car on the ferry; we could go roundtrip, island hopping and I think it was like $60. Friday Harbor has lots of little artsy shops that I liked and then we drove around the whole island. We went to Kilm State Park where there is a light house and places to whale watch and we saw a porpoise but we didn't wait long enough to see the whales. It would be nice to spend several days on the islands to see everything, we saw a whale museum, lavendar farm, alpaca farm and a winery. When we got back to Friday Harbor for our ferry ride back, we were given a number and told to come back to get parked for the ferry. We had to take a later ferry than we expected and after we got parked, we had to wait another hour and a half. We sat in a bar and talked to a local, John, for a while who was really nice. He told us that the day before there were bunches of people who were stranded on the island because there was no room on the ferry and that was after they added a ferry. So if you go here, be prepared to sign up for the ferry early if you want to get back to the mainland. The ferry ride was one of our favorite things on our trip, it was really relaxing and had the most beautiful views Mount Baker.
On our way home we stopped at Yellowstone to see a friend who lives in Meteetse which is only like 50 miles from the park. We stayed a bit north in Cody, WY. and then Tom went with Brian for a day and I visited the Buffalo Bill Cody Museum that I ended up loving. It was well organized and had sections about Yellowstone park, Plains Indians, Buffalo Bill Cody Wild West Show and Western Art (my favorite section) and Firearms (didn't go to this section) and they had the best mac and cheese I've ever had, yum! After the museum, I went into Cody and ended up having a really good day on my own. Yellowstone was beautiful, we saw elk and buffalo which at times seemed a little too close for comfort, but we got some great pics. Old Faithful was fun to watch, and there is such a strange mix of different things, lakes, woods, mountains (with snow that we could reach out and touch) and then the whole place seems to be bubbling with geysers and smells like sulfur.
We ended up driving 4622 miles. I did all the driving and Tom was a great co-pilot. He had the map and the camera, and it reminded me how great he is at math, he could tell us how many miles we had left from town to town and how long and when we would get to each place. Who needs a Garmin! I am not sure I would drive again, the Rocky Mountains are big and definitely take getting used to and the Cascades in Washington were scary (75 mph down a mountain in the pouring rain), I found the best strategy is not to look up or down, but to just keep my eyes on the road, and so the drive back was much better. If we had flown, we'd have missed seeing so much and being able to stop at some really wonderful places, like Little Big Horn, Custer's last stand on the Crow Indian Reservation in Montana. Montana should be called big gorgeous sky county! We'd been planning this trip for the last year to celebrate our 20th wedding anniversary and it was wonderful. A long blog, just wanted to be sure to get the most important stuff down.
Seattle Dock
Kilm Light House on San Juan Island
Elk at Yellowstone
No comments:
Post a Comment