Seattle Area

We arrived in the Seattle area Friday, May 21st and contacted HitchHiker friends, Ed and Frances Svendsen, who live in Northeast Seattle. We were happy to accept their offer of a guided tour of Seattle on Saturday. We took a driving tour of the city and stopped first at the Chittenden Locks that connect Lake Washington with the Puget Sound. The locks were very busy that day with many pleasure-boaters being locked through. We were amazed by the number of cruisers and yachts. Some people must still have money!
Among the highlights of downtown Seattle was Pikes Place Market where we witnessed the fish mongers throwing whole fish, Dungeness Crab, etc. They put on quite a show. The market also features a wide variety of produce and other items for sale. We felt all of the prices were very high which indicated to us they cater to the tourist trade. It's still a fun place to visit. From the waterfront we had great views of the Seattle skyline, professional sports stadiums, the famous Space Needle and cruise ships. We really appreciated the effort Ed and Frances contributed to our good time and again we thank them very much.

Sunday turned out to be a rather lazy day. After church, we went for breakfast at a locally-recommended bakery in Black Diamond. The food was exceptional! With all the home-baked goods, it would be easy to gain a couple of pounds by just inhaling.

We've seem lots of waterfalls since arriving in the Northwest and Monday was no exception. One of the most famous falls in this area is the Snoqualmie Falls. We felt lucky to have mostly sunny skies, for a change, which made picture-taking a pleasure. It proved to be one of the largest falls we've seen in terms of volume of water. It was very wide and produced a spectacular spray of water at the bottom.

Our final venture in this area was a trip to Mt. Rainier. Unfortunately, we had lots of rain and very low clouds so we were never able to see the summit of the mountain. It was an interesting drive anyway as there was deep snow at the higher elevations which resulted in most of the roads across the park being closed. We were finally able to drive to the main visitors center using the western most route. We encountered great scenery including several more waterfalls, a large glacier bed and even a black fox.

The next time you hear from us we'll be North of the border as we will cross into Canada Wednesday.