Northwest is nice
I really enjoyed our trip to Seattle, Vancouver, Victoria, the Olympic Peninsula and Mt Rainier. While we didn’t hit any of my yelp food finds, except for the Georgetown Truck Stop, we did eat well, and kept ourselves very entertained. All the pictures are on the Mac right now, I’m nowhere near ready to sort them and get them online. Maybe this afternoon or sometime this weekend. I’ve also got a lot of yelping to do. For now, I’ll attempt a quick blow-by-blow… and it will turn out to be a long-winded, rambling mess:
Our airport taxi wasn’t at the house on time, so we called them, and got upgraded to a stretch limo. We were late, but so was our plane. Frank, Sarah and I played Mario DS at the gate, and a random stranger joined in with us. Gotta love wi-fi video games. We ate Cinnabons at the airport, but after the delay and the long flight with minimal snacks and the extra long time it always seems to take United to get your luggage to the claim centers, we were starving. We said as much to the guy who drove our shuttle to the rental car place, and he suggested a couple very close food options. We picked up our super-duper 08 Dodge Grand Caravan SXT (later dubbed megatron, by Frank) it had power sliders and liftgate and a camera for backing up and a touchscreen stereo with Sirius built-in. It was pretty sweet. We immediately drove it around the block, to the closest food place that the shuttle guy recommended, Dave’s Diner. We got soups and sandwiches and desserts and it was all pretty yum. It was certainly, exactly what we needed. Then we found our way to our hotel (with the help of the GPS unit, that we added to the rental) and checked in. We decided to go check out what we could of the city, at that point, and ended up mostly driving through various neighborhoods as they closed up shop. We noted that Elliott Bay Book Company was still open, so we found some parking, shopped a bit, walked up and down a couple of streets and then got some pretty good Italian stuff at a place called Mitchelli’s. We headed back to the hotel, by way of a Walgreens, for some in-room snack foods.
The next day, we had our first sampling of the (decent) hotel breakfast, then headed directly for Pike Place Market. I think we got the full market experience in… saw the first Starbucks, experienced flying fish, had some mini-donuts, ate some crumpets. We debated buying some fish, but decided to put the decision off until it would keep for the trip home. We then headed back to the Pioneer Square area, to try and catch some of the shops that were closed when we walked around the night before. We really only went to one, Magic Mouse Toys, but it was worth it, big toy stores are awesome. Next we went around Elliott Bay to the viewpoint at Alki Beach. It was a great place to take in the whole Seattle skyline (pictures later, I promise). When we were done there, we decided to try to find Archie McPhee, which was fun… and we were about to get in the car and drive away when we saw More Archie McPhee across the parking lot. We started heading back to the hotel and then plugged “game stop” into our GPS, as an intermediate destination (Super Dodgeball Brawlers for the DS came out the day before we left, but we couldn’t find it anywhere). It brought us to a dead end street around the corner from Redmond High School. After a quick stop at a Target, where we saw a woman bring her dog shopping by letting him ride in the big part of the cart, we realized our error and searched for “gamestop” (without the space) and got our game. By this time, we were hungry, and entered Redmond Town Center, a giant outdoor mall, drove around it a couple times and then parked and walked over to Pizza Schmiza… which was delicious and well decorated. And then we went back to the hotel and to bed.
We attempted to get up early the next morning and drive directly to Canada. We didn’t get up as early as planned, but we got past the pushy, intimidating border guy and all the way to the Capilano Suspension Bridge in fairly good time. We walked around the grounds at the bridge for a while and took lots of fun pictures from up in the trees and stuff. We went to a very expensive Canadian Burger King on the way out and, since Sarah started running out of polaroid film, we plugged “camera” into the GPS. It led us to an amazing Asian mall called Aberdeen Centre. No film for us, but a crazy experience, none-the-less. We continued to make our way through the Vancouver traffic congestion to the ferries. When we finally got to there, we were a little early, so we headed into the Tsawwassen Quay Market and found Oh Gelato, a gelato place with amazing presentation and very yummy gelato. We got on the ferry, which was huge, and explored it for a while before settling down and enjoying the ride. When we got to Victoria, we decided against the gardens, since we were already tired from walking around Capilano, and instead, drove and walked around downtwon Victoria a bit. We even parked in the “Tourist Parking” and got out and took some pictures. We checked into our hotel for the night and Sarah’s Mom went and got some Red Robin, which was sort of gross. Then we slept.
We had a few choices for breakfast, but it was our last day in Canada and everyone indulged my Tim Horton’s obsession. We hit a camera shop for polaroid pack film, and scored some b&w. Our ferry out of Victoria filled up very early, so we were stuck there for a while. We explored the area we had driven and walked through the night before, including a great shoe store called Baggins with lots and lots of Converse. We also drove up to the castle and took a few pictures but didn’t go in any further than the gift shop. Then we wandered South to a place called Clover Point, where we had a cool view of the mountains of the Olympic Peninsula and some guys flying kites. We picked up some goodies at the Dutch Bakery and headed to the next ferry. We had to wait there a long time, questioned again by border and customs people.The ride was ok, though… we enjoyed watching the huge mountains in the distance get bigger and bigger. We arrived in Port Angeles, WA and, after a quick stop at Rite Aid, we headed up to the Olympic National Forest Visitors Center, which was closed, but just happened to be a guy there who workedin the park. He told us that we could probably make it to the rain forest with some daylight and could definitely make it to the coast before sunset. We decided to drive towards the coast, enjoy the sunset, stay somewhere in Forks then enjoy the Hoh Rain Forest and Hurricane Ridge the next day. We ate at one of the few restaurants in town and then checked into a HUGE suite just outside of town. I got the best night of sleep on the whole trip in that place.
We went to breakfast at the restaurant across the street from the one we ate at the night before. Breakfast portions were huge, so we were happy. Then we headed into the Rain Forest, which was gorgeous, and took a bunch of pictures. Furry trees are cool… then we went back through Forks, and around the park, through Port Angeles, again, and up to Hurricane Ridge. Lots of pretty mountain views on the way, but the top was kinda foggy/cloudy. We had a little food up at the visitor center on the ridge and then started the long drive to the original hotel … we didn’t make the ferry that cut through Puget Sound, so we had to drive around. I was pretty beat after all that driving.
Monday morning, we sacrificed a trip to the creperie to go visit Nintendo of America’s Redmond headquarters… it was sort of nestled in amongst Microsoft-land. There was a cute little visitor center. Then we headed downtown to check out the Experience Music Project and Science Fiction Museum, which I think were worth the money… we were a little worried about it after reading the reviews. We combined that trip with lunch/dinner at the Sky City restaurant in the Space Needle… then we popped over to Pike Place Market to buy more donuts and purchase the fish. I ate some donuts and drank some of the Walgreens milk that we bought on our first day, back at the hotel that night… and I think it made me sick.
On our last full day, we headed to the Georgetown Truck Stop for breakfast. It was very impressive… in it’s small size and big portions. Mt Rainier was our destination for the day… not the top… but the park, in general. We opted to go in the Southwest entrance, since it was open year-round, and some of the roads were still closed. We found out once we were in the park that the Northeast entrance (and Southeast entrance) were both also open, but some of the higher roads were not. It was kind of cloudy/rainy, so some of our views could have been better, but we did catch a break in the clouds and see Rainier at least once. The visitors center at Paradise was really cool, but apparently very impractical and due to be shut down… so I took lots of pictures of it. On our way down the mountains and out of the park, we grabbed some dinner at a local Inn/Restaurant/Gift Shop and then headed back to the hotel for our final night of sleep.
Aside from my body trying to eat itself from the inside, the day of our departure was fairly uneventful. There was a small delay in our plane, a large delay in our luggage getting to the baggage claim and a lot of sleeping, by me, through most of it.
Overall, great trip. We brought home a few Huckleberry flavored souvenirs and some clothing and trinkets from here and there. We’re on a website for the Forks visitors center, holding a sign, proving that we’re Twilight fans who visited Forks. I’ve got a bazillion pictures to go through… and I can now say I’ve been to the Pacific Northwest and that I like it a lot. I’ll surely think of some great thing that I forgot about or some super highlights to expand upon later, but for now, I am done.
woot