We rolled into Vegas late Friday night and booked the room for two nights to give us a chance to see all and do all we wanted to do and see. There is one thing we have observed the past several days since leaving Sacramento is that there had to be some rough and tough folks to make it out here. This is some harsh territory. The air is very hot and dry, which is hard on the skin. The locals look like their skin is made of dark brown leather. John and I are quite the “palefaces” compared to everyone else. Also, it is interesting to note that most license plates we have seen are from California! We found out why later on in our adventure. We got a good night’s sleep and got up early (for us) and drove out to Lake Mead and Hoover Dam. Damn, what a dam! Everything is larger than life out here and this was no exception. I chickened out when I saw how high and narrow the dam is and John left me off at the visitor’s center where I people watched thank you very much while he drove over the dam and got pictures, then he WALKED back over it to tell me where he would pick me up and then he had to WALK back over it to get the car. Jeese Louise! I imagined that if I set foot on that thing an earthquake would occur and I would tumble to my death and if I rode over it in the car someone would hit us and knock us over. It is a curse to have such an active imagination at times, you know? We stopped in Boulder City on our way back to Vegas and had hot dogs at A&W Rootbeer. They are everywhere out here as are Denny’s. We also learned that Del Taco first opened close by. Junk food country I do say. On our way back to our home away from home, HI Express, Las Vegas West, we stopped at the Red Rock Harley Davidson dealership to get a t-shirt. Hey, you can’t come all the way to Vegas and NOT get a Las Vegas Harley tee, right? So, back we are in the room and since the Alabama/Georgia game started out here at 4:45 p.m. we decided that we would stay in and watch the game and hit the Strip Sunday a.m. when we thought it wouldn’t be so crowded. We were so pumped and excited that Georgia got beat we just could hardly stand it. They have been bragging about their record but hell fire before this weekend they haven’t played anybody in the SEC, just second class schools that they could easily beat. They are such whiners. So we set out Sunday a.m. fully intending on hitting the strip, walking around and doing a little gambling. Yee-haa! So we get there and find out that there are no parking lots! You can only park at a Casino where you are going to gamble!?! What’s up with that? So we just rode down the strip and took pictures at red lights and no, Sunday is not a quiet day here. It is swamped with people and the parking decks at the casinos were slap dab full. As we were leaving Las Vegas (I keep hearing Sheryl Crow singing…”I’m leavin’ Las Vegas”) we missed a turn and it was very serendipitous because we found ourselves in Prim Valley, NV which is on the NV/CA stateline and which is about 25 miles out of our way, but, Mecca! This is a smaller gambling venue and easy parking. We stopped at Whiskey Pete’s since we just couldn’t come all the way out here and not drop a few bucks. I absolutely love blackjack and I was able to find a table with a dealer and no one playing but me. I handed her a $100 bill and asked for some chips and told her I was no gambler and didn’t really know all the rules but I loved to play the game. She was just a perfect sweetheart. She clued me in on what to do when I was about to do something stupid and explained the rules to me that I had never heard of like taking insurance when she turned up an Ace and to stay when she turned up a 4 or 6. Then this weathered battered looking woman joins me and mutters “I just lost $60 and I need to try to win it back before my husband picks me up”. I just sit there but she strikes up a conversation with me and I tell her that I am no good at gambling but I like it and she warmed up to me and took me under her wing so to speak. We were at a $5 table and she was betting the minimum. I wasn’t worrying about it because I had $100 to lose but I got the feeling that she didn’t. She told me that she was originally from Louisiana but now lives in Palm Springs, CA!!! Four hours they drove to gamble and do it every weekend. Her husband was across the street at Buffalo Bills checking them out of the hotel and she was trying to win back some money. Jeese. I am glad that wine is my vice and not gambling. Anyway, she brought me luck and I got a few blackjacks, well more than a few, about 6 or 7. But I would lose a couple hands in between and since I don’t really know how to gamble, I sat there and played until I was down to $10 and I threw in the towel and left the $10 for my dealer, since she made it possible for me to play a lot longer than I would have been able to had she not given me a little help. Fun, fun, fun, but not something I would want to do very often. It is too stressful. John likes the video poker slots and he played as long as I did and was only down $8. So, there you go. In the past when I have played the slots I have always left a winner, but it is not nearly as much fun, to me, as blackjack.
We motored on into Arizona and Mountain Time and settled in Williams, AZ, which is the gateway to the Grand Canyon. We will get up on Monday and make our way up there. We are hoping to find a room up there for Monday night so that we can spend an extra day there and take these God forsaken bicycles off the car. We have come over 4,000 miles with them on the roof!! We have jokenly said that we may just end up carrying them all across the country without getting them off!!! We do plan on staying a couple of days in Santa Fe so if we don’t get them down tomorrow, then maybe later on in the week. Another sidebar…my hair is straight. Yep. Low humidity equals straight hair. It’s silky, smooth and straight like a surfer chick’s. I was so envious of the surfer girls in FL in my youth because they had silky locks of gold while I only had black locks of frizz. So maybe we need to move out here so I can have a good hair day every day….
Monday, September 29, 2008
Saturday, September 27, 2008
High Desert, Nevada
We left Carson City, NV headed southeast with no plans except to reach Las Vegas at the end of the day. We traveled through Nevada’s great basin a/k/a The High Desert and came upon the biggest and most remote Army Depot that we had ever seen. Located in Hawthorne, NV, the Hawthorne Army Depot covered thousands of acres of desert and it appeared that there were at least a thousand barrack buildings. We witnessed three Hum-Vs in desert paint with automatic rifles on top, manned by several soldiers each who had apparently just come back from a training mission. Cool. The only signs of life through the entire morning was one scorpion skittering across the road, one mule who looked totally lost and 3 buffalo enclosed in a small corral. We kept on climbing gradually until we reached the town of Tonopah, NV and learned that it sits at over 6,000 feet above sea level and on its eastern edge lies Nellis Air Test Range. Yikes! This town was about the creepiest we had ever seen. In the early 1900s it was a booming mine town (mining what, we never found out, but it wasn’t gold or silver) but now it is nearly a ghost town. There are more junk cars and trucks out here that we have ever seen. The residents encircle their property with junk vehicles, as if they were circling the wagons! I think the nuclear testing has done something strange out here! Nellis encompasses a good 200 square miles of desert and we understand now why they chose this area. There is not a living thing here but sage brush and the occasional prairie chicken, hawk or crow. We continued on and decided that we would take a 75 mile side trip to Death Valley. Hey, we drove this far, how could we NOT go there? It was awesome. The mountains appeared to be made of sand in many different colors of pink, yellow, grey and black. Remember the sand art that the kids made by putting layers of different colored sand in a glass jar? That’s what it looks like. Beautiful, remote, scary in a way and at the bottom is the Arasmosa River at minus 190 feet below sea level! The river is only a thin stream this time of year, but we saw signs that this area is subject to major flooding if they get a little rain. We stopped at Furnace Creek to view the inn there. Right smack dab in the middle of Death Valley is this beautiful inn. We were so glad that we took this side trip because it was a wonder to behold. The pictures don’t do it justice. (I hate this camera, remember?) We then drove the 80 or so miles into Vegas and went to where the HI Express locater told us to go, but we never found it and ended up calling 411 and getting lodging at the HI Express West Las Vegas instead. So, it was 9:00 pm before we got settled in last night. Saturday, we plan on visiting Lake Mead and Hoover Dam and coming back to the room and get gussied up and hit the Strip and drop a couple of dollars!
Thursday, September 25, 2008
Sacramento, Reno and Carson City, NV
We arrived at Joe and Linda’s house right on schedule; 4:00 p.m. or so. Their home is so beautiful and they have made many upgrades. Linda has perfect taste and you ought to see what she has done to the guest bathroom. It has been glazed; that is, the paint and a glaze were mixed and she put it on with an applicator that gives it a sort of antique-y look, but shiny and a wonderful desert red. The new hardwood floors just pull all of her decorator touches together. You may recall how big the house is on the inside, but doesn’t look it on the outside. It actually appeared larger with the new paint and floors. Good Job, Linda and Joe! We were thrilled when Andy, Tycee and Peyton showed up. We told them we had traveled 4,400 miles just to see that beautiful baby! He is a charmer and so smart! He and Colin are so much alike and both share that curiosity and the almost ravenous way that they investigate new things. John and I were both enthralled. Luckily we got to babysit while Andy and Tycee took in a movie. Apparently, they don't get to go on dates very often, and we were glad to accommodate them. Linda provided the two pictures of part of the California Nixes since our visit was just overnight and our camera had died! I hate this new camera. It requires regular batteries and it doesn’t come with a charger like the Sony. We have gone through four packages of batteries so far. Grrr
Joe advised us to drive on over to Nevada and head to Vegas that way because the roads are so much better than in California. He was so right. The ride over here was fantastic. The picture of the beautiful mountain in the Sierra Nevada Range was taken on our way to Reno this morning. We stopped for gas and were greeted by a whole gaggle of bikers. I spoke with a young woman there and she informed us that this is the weekend of “Street Vibrations”, a 4-day long bike rally in Reno! Yikes! We decided to pass Reno by and go on to Carson City, NV for the night. We got here early enough to check in, settle in and then go exploring. We quickly found out that even though the main rally is in Reno, the Carson City HD dealership was holding its own event so we drove up the mountain (over a mile up) to Silver City and then Virginia City, which had its share of bikers as well. The whole area has become inundated with bikers. We did have a great adventure there and bought our first souvenir! We were greatly disappointed to learn that the Ponderosa Ranch is now closed. A developer from California bought the property and operated it as a tourist attraction until there were few visitors and closed it down. John and I had tried to visit it when we were at Lake Tahoe a few Thanksgivings back and it was still operating at that time, but was closed for the winter. Boo hoo. We really had our hearts set on visiting the home of the Cartwrights. So, moving right along, we visited the Delta Saloon, there resides the "Suicide Table" which is a Faro Table and which there were 3 separate miners who, after striking it rich in the gold mines, proceeded to lose everything they had at this card game and as a result,shot themselves dead right there (as Bert's father would say). In Silver City which is just a mile or so down the mountain, silver was discovered, and there are many mines still in evidence in the area but are dangerous and only viewed on guided tours UNDERGROUND. Yikes. John and I don't do underground or caves. So we passed on that, but snapped a picture of the outside of one on our way back to Carson City. I tried to take more pictures today, per a request from Kelsey and when we get to Vegas tomorrow, you bet your booty that we will have even more! John said we are staying in Vegas until we are either millionaire or lose all our money! Yippee.
Joe advised us to drive on over to Nevada and head to Vegas that way because the roads are so much better than in California. He was so right. The ride over here was fantastic. The picture of the beautiful mountain in the Sierra Nevada Range was taken on our way to Reno this morning. We stopped for gas and were greeted by a whole gaggle of bikers. I spoke with a young woman there and she informed us that this is the weekend of “Street Vibrations”, a 4-day long bike rally in Reno! Yikes! We decided to pass Reno by and go on to Carson City, NV for the night. We got here early enough to check in, settle in and then go exploring. We quickly found out that even though the main rally is in Reno, the Carson City HD dealership was holding its own event so we drove up the mountain (over a mile up) to Silver City and then Virginia City, which had its share of bikers as well. The whole area has become inundated with bikers. We did have a great adventure there and bought our first souvenir! We were greatly disappointed to learn that the Ponderosa Ranch is now closed. A developer from California bought the property and operated it as a tourist attraction until there were few visitors and closed it down. John and I had tried to visit it when we were at Lake Tahoe a few Thanksgivings back and it was still operating at that time, but was closed for the winter. Boo hoo. We really had our hearts set on visiting the home of the Cartwrights. So, moving right along, we visited the Delta Saloon, there resides the "Suicide Table" which is a Faro Table and which there were 3 separate miners who, after striking it rich in the gold mines, proceeded to lose everything they had at this card game and as a result,shot themselves dead right there (as Bert's father would say). In Silver City which is just a mile or so down the mountain, silver was discovered, and there are many mines still in evidence in the area but are dangerous and only viewed on guided tours UNDERGROUND. Yikes. John and I don't do underground or caves. So we passed on that, but snapped a picture of the outside of one on our way back to Carson City. I tried to take more pictures today, per a request from Kelsey and when we get to Vegas tomorrow, you bet your booty that we will have even more! John said we are staying in Vegas until we are either millionaire or lose all our money! Yippee.
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
Big Trees
September 23, 2008
Morning greeted us with sunshine again with cool temps and a breeze off the Pacific. We decided to stop in the Redwood Forest and take a little time there so we pretty much humped it to get through there to Redding, CA where we stopped for the night. There is so much out here that it is really had to describe. The forests give way to crashing waves of the Pacific and you go from the Tsunami Warning areas next to the beaches to heights of 3,000 feet with breathtaking views of the mountains and the Pacific. We stopped at a museum in the Redwood Forest and I couldn’t resist taking this picture of Paul Bunyan and Babe. The trees were much taller than Paul and as you can see John standing by his boot, he’s no little pipsqueak. It took us a while to cross the mountains to Redding and we have some errands to run in the a.m. so we will take the leisurely drive down to Sacramento tomorrow. We are so excited that we are going to see at least some of the California Nixes!
One more sidenote. Everything out here is so pristine and aside for the occasional tiny town, the mountains are all as wild as they were when first discovered.
Morning greeted us with sunshine again with cool temps and a breeze off the Pacific. We decided to stop in the Redwood Forest and take a little time there so we pretty much humped it to get through there to Redding, CA where we stopped for the night. There is so much out here that it is really had to describe. The forests give way to crashing waves of the Pacific and you go from the Tsunami Warning areas next to the beaches to heights of 3,000 feet with breathtaking views of the mountains and the Pacific. We stopped at a museum in the Redwood Forest and I couldn’t resist taking this picture of Paul Bunyan and Babe. The trees were much taller than Paul and as you can see John standing by his boot, he’s no little pipsqueak. It took us a while to cross the mountains to Redding and we have some errands to run in the a.m. so we will take the leisurely drive down to Sacramento tomorrow. We are so excited that we are going to see at least some of the California Nixes!
One more sidenote. Everything out here is so pristine and aside for the occasional tiny town, the mountains are all as wild as they were when first discovered.
Monday, September 22, 2008
Pacific Coast Byway
September 20 through 22, 2008
We left Tacoma on Saturday, the 20th in a drizzle of rain and quite cool. Traffic in that area is horrendous and we were glad to get south of their to Portland, OR and tour Powell’s Bookstore. Well we got to Portland alright and it really reminds me of Gotham City. There are many, many bridges in Oregon and the first one we saw was the Fremont Bridge in Portland. It’s very gothic, green in color and concrete monuments framing each end. The directions I had to Powell’s were totally off base and we were out of town before we found the turnoff. Since we wanted to make the coast that day, we decided to just go on and not stop until we got to the Pacific Coast Byway (Highway 101). The trees in Oregon are just awesome and are everywhere, even in the cities. I can’t wait to get home and try to re-capture their grandeur in pastels. We got to the coast and discovered that everybody in Oregon decided to go to the coast this weekend, and we had trouble finding a room. We wanted to be on the beach and finally found the last room in town apparently, in Newport, OR at the Hallmark Resort. The last room was actually a King Suite with a full kitchen and Jacuzzi with a private balcony overlooking the Pacific Ocean! Just what the doctor ordered. We decided to stay the weekend there because it is such a beautiful area. The sunset was amazing and I am including all shots from Saturday night and Sunday night because I couldn’t just pick one! We relaxed in the Jacuzzi Saturday night and ordered room service. Ah, I love room service! Sunday we slept in and then went to tour the area and take pictures. The lighthouse was just beautiful. We could see if from our balcony, but wanted to take a closer look. Then we went down to the bay and downtown. Everything is so quaint along the scenic byway and we thoroughly enjoyed the day. Since we had a full kitchen in the suite, completely furnished with pots, pans, dishes, etc. we went to the local Fred Meyer, which is Oregon’s answer to Wal-Mart and snagged some shrimp, Brussels sprouts and corn and cooked our supper. It was so good to be able to cook. We have missed that these past two weeks. So Monday a.m. we arose to sunshine and a beautiful day, but also we discovered the battery had died in the Xterra! We called the 1-800 number for Nissan and learned that there is a Nissan dealership in Newport, OR! We took the car in and luckily Newport is large enough to have a dealership but small enough that they got us in, diagnosed the problem, found it was indeed just the battery and even washed it for us after they replaced it. The people in Oregon are so cheerful and friendly and appear to be really happy. I guess the surroundings make a body feel good! We continued our journey and were determined to get to the Redwood Forest on Monday. The Pacific Coast Byway takes you through forests, mountains and then at once you go around a curve and you are on a precipice overlooking the Pacific. Of course it is on MY side of the car and I was doing a lot of “OMG, OMG” as John careened around the curves. At every turn there was danger, if not rocks, slides, elk crossings or high wind gusts, it was a 300 foot drop to the ocean! I was just short of being fearful, so it was very exciting, but not too scary. We made it to Crescent City, CA this evening and have a lovely room at the Hampton on the beach. We are going to get an early start tomorrow and drive through the Redwoods and make our way to Sacramento. We are really having a wonderful time and keep telling each other how glad we are that we decided to do this.
We left Tacoma on Saturday, the 20th in a drizzle of rain and quite cool. Traffic in that area is horrendous and we were glad to get south of their to Portland, OR and tour Powell’s Bookstore. Well we got to Portland alright and it really reminds me of Gotham City. There are many, many bridges in Oregon and the first one we saw was the Fremont Bridge in Portland. It’s very gothic, green in color and concrete monuments framing each end. The directions I had to Powell’s were totally off base and we were out of town before we found the turnoff. Since we wanted to make the coast that day, we decided to just go on and not stop until we got to the Pacific Coast Byway (Highway 101). The trees in Oregon are just awesome and are everywhere, even in the cities. I can’t wait to get home and try to re-capture their grandeur in pastels. We got to the coast and discovered that everybody in Oregon decided to go to the coast this weekend, and we had trouble finding a room. We wanted to be on the beach and finally found the last room in town apparently, in Newport, OR at the Hallmark Resort. The last room was actually a King Suite with a full kitchen and Jacuzzi with a private balcony overlooking the Pacific Ocean! Just what the doctor ordered. We decided to stay the weekend there because it is such a beautiful area. The sunset was amazing and I am including all shots from Saturday night and Sunday night because I couldn’t just pick one! We relaxed in the Jacuzzi Saturday night and ordered room service. Ah, I love room service! Sunday we slept in and then went to tour the area and take pictures. The lighthouse was just beautiful. We could see if from our balcony, but wanted to take a closer look. Then we went down to the bay and downtown. Everything is so quaint along the scenic byway and we thoroughly enjoyed the day. Since we had a full kitchen in the suite, completely furnished with pots, pans, dishes, etc. we went to the local Fred Meyer, which is Oregon’s answer to Wal-Mart and snagged some shrimp, Brussels sprouts and corn and cooked our supper. It was so good to be able to cook. We have missed that these past two weeks. So Monday a.m. we arose to sunshine and a beautiful day, but also we discovered the battery had died in the Xterra! We called the 1-800 number for Nissan and learned that there is a Nissan dealership in Newport, OR! We took the car in and luckily Newport is large enough to have a dealership but small enough that they got us in, diagnosed the problem, found it was indeed just the battery and even washed it for us after they replaced it. The people in Oregon are so cheerful and friendly and appear to be really happy. I guess the surroundings make a body feel good! We continued our journey and were determined to get to the Redwood Forest on Monday. The Pacific Coast Byway takes you through forests, mountains and then at once you go around a curve and you are on a precipice overlooking the Pacific. Of course it is on MY side of the car and I was doing a lot of “OMG, OMG” as John careened around the curves. At every turn there was danger, if not rocks, slides, elk crossings or high wind gusts, it was a 300 foot drop to the ocean! I was just short of being fearful, so it was very exciting, but not too scary. We made it to Crescent City, CA this evening and have a lovely room at the Hampton on the beach. We are going to get an early start tomorrow and drive through the Redwoods and make our way to Sacramento. We are really having a wonderful time and keep telling each other how glad we are that we decided to do this.
Friday, September 19, 2008
Hapless Friday
September 19, 2008
We had every intention of driving to Vancouver, BC today and were 10 miles south of the border when we decided to stop for lunch and gas up. We didn’t want to spend many dollars outside the good ole US of A and boy were we glad we did! We had a typical Denny’s lunch and were looking forward to our adventure across the border, when the couple next to us got up to leave and the woman cried “oh my back” and she looked over at me and told us they had just sat at the border trying to get back in the US for 2 hours! She told us that they heard if you don’t get back before 11:00 a.m. you will be sitting there for a while since the security is much more stringent coming into the US than it is going into Canada. So we decided to just go to the border, take a couple of pictures and come on back to Tacoma and get ready for our trek into Oregon tomorrow. Well, one thing we have to say about Seattle traffic. It sucks. Atlanta traffic seems like going through Bolingbroke compared to this crazy town. The people drive like maniacs for one thing. We saw a dude in a Beamer try to cut in front of an F250 (the big ole honking pickup) and the truck just pulled up and the guy in the Beamer ran into his side! Hello, F250 vs. Beamer??? How stupid can you get? I think these folks need a little sunshine. It has drizzled and has been overcast the whole time we’ve been in the area, but actually it feels pretty good (70 degrees!) but I don’t think I would like it all the time. It is like this for 10 months out of the year and they have an average of 60 plus inches of rain per year. Yikes! But everything is beautiful and green and lots of flowers. Please let me give another sidebar about a cool doughnut shop here. There were two guys who wanted to open a doughnut shop in downtown Seattle because they had this great recipe for hand made doughnuts. They went to a salvage yard and found a neon sign from a defunct business whose name was “Top Spot”. As they made their way back to downtown Seattle with their prize, the “S” fell off the sign and disintegrated on the interstate. These guys were undaunted by this event and proudly named their doughnut shop the “Top Pot” and their doughnuts are to die for. We weren’t able to go to the Top Pot in person, but as most of you know Starbucks was founded here and they carry Top Pot doughnuts to go with their excellent coffees and teas. We stopped at a Starbucks on our way back from the Canadian border and yes, they had Top Pot doughnuts, but only the glazed chocolate ones and I had read that the plain, no glaze ones are the best. We are going to stop at Starbucks on our way out of Tacoma in the a.m. and hopefully I can snag a plain, no glaze one. Our plan for tomorrow is to get to Portland for lunch and a side trip to Powell’s Bookstore, the county’s largest and where I order books that are out of print that I can’t get at Barnes & Noble. After that we plan on going to the Oregon coast and settling in at Lincoln City. On Sunday we plan on visiting the “Big Trees” in NE California and hopefully make Sacramento on Monday.
We had every intention of driving to Vancouver, BC today and were 10 miles south of the border when we decided to stop for lunch and gas up. We didn’t want to spend many dollars outside the good ole US of A and boy were we glad we did! We had a typical Denny’s lunch and were looking forward to our adventure across the border, when the couple next to us got up to leave and the woman cried “oh my back” and she looked over at me and told us they had just sat at the border trying to get back in the US for 2 hours! She told us that they heard if you don’t get back before 11:00 a.m. you will be sitting there for a while since the security is much more stringent coming into the US than it is going into Canada. So we decided to just go to the border, take a couple of pictures and come on back to Tacoma and get ready for our trek into Oregon tomorrow. Well, one thing we have to say about Seattle traffic. It sucks. Atlanta traffic seems like going through Bolingbroke compared to this crazy town. The people drive like maniacs for one thing. We saw a dude in a Beamer try to cut in front of an F250 (the big ole honking pickup) and the truck just pulled up and the guy in the Beamer ran into his side! Hello, F250 vs. Beamer??? How stupid can you get? I think these folks need a little sunshine. It has drizzled and has been overcast the whole time we’ve been in the area, but actually it feels pretty good (70 degrees!) but I don’t think I would like it all the time. It is like this for 10 months out of the year and they have an average of 60 plus inches of rain per year. Yikes! But everything is beautiful and green and lots of flowers. Please let me give another sidebar about a cool doughnut shop here. There were two guys who wanted to open a doughnut shop in downtown Seattle because they had this great recipe for hand made doughnuts. They went to a salvage yard and found a neon sign from a defunct business whose name was “Top Spot”. As they made their way back to downtown Seattle with their prize, the “S” fell off the sign and disintegrated on the interstate. These guys were undaunted by this event and proudly named their doughnut shop the “Top Pot” and their doughnuts are to die for. We weren’t able to go to the Top Pot in person, but as most of you know Starbucks was founded here and they carry Top Pot doughnuts to go with their excellent coffees and teas. We stopped at a Starbucks on our way back from the Canadian border and yes, they had Top Pot doughnuts, but only the glazed chocolate ones and I had read that the plain, no glaze ones are the best. We are going to stop at Starbucks on our way out of Tacoma in the a.m. and hopefully I can snag a plain, no glaze one. Our plan for tomorrow is to get to Portland for lunch and a side trip to Powell’s Bookstore, the county’s largest and where I order books that are out of print that I can’t get at Barnes & Noble. After that we plan on going to the Oregon coast and settling in at Lincoln City. On Sunday we plan on visiting the “Big Trees” in NE California and hopefully make Sacramento on Monday.
Thursday, September 18, 2008
Sleepless in Seattle
September 18, 2008
Today we decided to go back to Seattle and take the Monorail from the Space Needle down to the Public Market on the coast of Puget Sound and tour the city in one of the “Ducks”, amphibian vehicles from WWII that take you through the city and into the Sound. The Space Needle is ground zero for tourists. It is located in the Seattle Center, a 30 odd acre park that has, along with the Space Needle, the Sci-Fi Museum, The Rock Museum that is supposedly in the shape of Jimi Hendrix’s guitar. He was from Seattle and bought his first guitar there. We traveled to the Westpark area, which is so much like the shopping district of San Francisco with Nordstrom, originated here in the early 1900s, Macys, and many tony clothing and shoe shops that we just knew were too pricey for our budget. The people we encountered in this area were (pardon the expression) high dollar grunge. The average age here is 34 and the number one profession is attorney-at-law. So we were passing these professional people during their lunch break who sported denim and leather but with a grunge look. We are both people watchers and we certainly got our fix for a couple weeks! So then we make our way from 5th Avenue down to the Public Market at the wharf. They have the best produce from local growers there on 3 levels! Also meats and the famous Pike Place Fish Market where the “Fish” series of motivational materials was filmed and presented at Alston & Bird a few years ago. We saw Brussels sprouts the size of baseballs and white corn on the cob the size of rolling pins. I mean everything was beautiful and bigger than what we are accustomed to. We had a head’s up from Linda and Dana to check out Ivar’s clam chowder, but we had walked 10 blocks and settled for Pike Place Chowder which was very tasty and served with sourdough bread. There were several street performers included one dude with a piano on wheels! Our entertainer was a drunken Hispanic Rastafarian who sang Aie Yai Yai Ya….with a slur in his voice. Too funny. We then made our way back to the Monorail and to the Duck staging area. This was so cool. The guide was very knowledgeable about Seattle and pointed out many things we would have missed had we gone out on our own. For example, at the Safeco Stadium, Bill Gates was addressing over 40,000 employees of Microsoft on a state of the corporation convention. His home is about 4 miles outside of downtown Seattle and is built to resemble a Ski Chalet and has over 20,000 square feet of space. Sheese. We were taken down the Alaskan Way, which is the road hugging the coastline and also where we discovered Ivar’s!!! We never would have found it on foot and were glad we just went ahead and had lunch at the Market. We then went to the boat launch and yes, you guessed it, we plunged into Puget Sound and started motoring over the water just like that! Our guide told us that the inventor of Windows is the boyfriend of Martha Stewart and I am sorry that I cannot remember his name. However, our guide said that he encountered Martha and her boyfriend on one of his trips out just this past Tuesday and he recognized the boat as Martha’s and motored over close to it and Martha acknowledged everyone on the Duck. We weren’t that lucky. We only had the pleasure of experiencing Seattle from a distance and weren’t disappointed. We then came upon the house boats that the guide explained had been there since the gold rush. He told us that when the miners came through on their way back from the gold fields that they put over a billion dollars into the economy and the locals couldn’t afford the land anymore, so they built their homes on the sound on floated on timbers! They didn’t have electricity, water, gas or property taxes because they were on the water. Nowadays, these little 400 square foot structures go for hundreds of thousands of dollars. Next we came upon the houseboat that was home to Tom Hanks in “Sleepless in Seattle”. The current owner bought it for $500,000 in 1996 and has it up for sale for $2.5 million! Yikes! The cost of living here is higher than Atlanta and I don’t know how anybody can make it here. We finished our tour on land through the Bohemian section of town where there are a lot of art galleries and statuary. We made our way back to Tacoma and our wonderful HI Express room which we decided to keep another night. We decided not to take the ferry to Victoria, instead we will drive to Vancouver, BC tomorrow and then on Saturday we plan to take the Oregon coast highway until we get ready to stop. No HI Express down that way, but we didn’t expect to find one. Hopefully, we will find lodging on the coast and have a fabulous sunset in store.
Today we decided to go back to Seattle and take the Monorail from the Space Needle down to the Public Market on the coast of Puget Sound and tour the city in one of the “Ducks”, amphibian vehicles from WWII that take you through the city and into the Sound. The Space Needle is ground zero for tourists. It is located in the Seattle Center, a 30 odd acre park that has, along with the Space Needle, the Sci-Fi Museum, The Rock Museum that is supposedly in the shape of Jimi Hendrix’s guitar. He was from Seattle and bought his first guitar there. We traveled to the Westpark area, which is so much like the shopping district of San Francisco with Nordstrom, originated here in the early 1900s, Macys, and many tony clothing and shoe shops that we just knew were too pricey for our budget. The people we encountered in this area were (pardon the expression) high dollar grunge. The average age here is 34 and the number one profession is attorney-at-law. So we were passing these professional people during their lunch break who sported denim and leather but with a grunge look. We are both people watchers and we certainly got our fix for a couple weeks! So then we make our way from 5th Avenue down to the Public Market at the wharf. They have the best produce from local growers there on 3 levels! Also meats and the famous Pike Place Fish Market where the “Fish” series of motivational materials was filmed and presented at Alston & Bird a few years ago. We saw Brussels sprouts the size of baseballs and white corn on the cob the size of rolling pins. I mean everything was beautiful and bigger than what we are accustomed to. We had a head’s up from Linda and Dana to check out Ivar’s clam chowder, but we had walked 10 blocks and settled for Pike Place Chowder which was very tasty and served with sourdough bread. There were several street performers included one dude with a piano on wheels! Our entertainer was a drunken Hispanic Rastafarian who sang Aie Yai Yai Ya….with a slur in his voice. Too funny. We then made our way back to the Monorail and to the Duck staging area. This was so cool. The guide was very knowledgeable about Seattle and pointed out many things we would have missed had we gone out on our own. For example, at the Safeco Stadium, Bill Gates was addressing over 40,000 employees of Microsoft on a state of the corporation convention. His home is about 4 miles outside of downtown Seattle and is built to resemble a Ski Chalet and has over 20,000 square feet of space. Sheese. We were taken down the Alaskan Way, which is the road hugging the coastline and also where we discovered Ivar’s!!! We never would have found it on foot and were glad we just went ahead and had lunch at the Market. We then went to the boat launch and yes, you guessed it, we plunged into Puget Sound and started motoring over the water just like that! Our guide told us that the inventor of Windows is the boyfriend of Martha Stewart and I am sorry that I cannot remember his name. However, our guide said that he encountered Martha and her boyfriend on one of his trips out just this past Tuesday and he recognized the boat as Martha’s and motored over close to it and Martha acknowledged everyone on the Duck. We weren’t that lucky. We only had the pleasure of experiencing Seattle from a distance and weren’t disappointed. We then came upon the house boats that the guide explained had been there since the gold rush. He told us that when the miners came through on their way back from the gold fields that they put over a billion dollars into the economy and the locals couldn’t afford the land anymore, so they built their homes on the sound on floated on timbers! They didn’t have electricity, water, gas or property taxes because they were on the water. Nowadays, these little 400 square foot structures go for hundreds of thousands of dollars. Next we came upon the houseboat that was home to Tom Hanks in “Sleepless in Seattle”. The current owner bought it for $500,000 in 1996 and has it up for sale for $2.5 million! Yikes! The cost of living here is higher than Atlanta and I don’t know how anybody can make it here. We finished our tour on land through the Bohemian section of town where there are a lot of art galleries and statuary. We made our way back to Tacoma and our wonderful HI Express room which we decided to keep another night. We decided not to take the ferry to Victoria, instead we will drive to Vancouver, BC tomorrow and then on Saturday we plan to take the Oregon coast highway until we get ready to stop. No HI Express down that way, but we didn’t expect to find one. Hopefully, we will find lodging on the coast and have a fabulous sunset in store.
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