Cloudless in Seattle (finally!)

Day 12
Saturday, June 26, 2010
Sightseeing by consensus

We slept a little later than in past days and took our time with breakfast. The morning sky was overcast, just like yesterday, but no rain.

We had a family powwow, discussed our options for ways to spend our last day in Seattle and reach a consensus. We would split up. Sessy and Elliot chose to visit the Seattle Art Museum while Frank and Emily set out to explore the Alki neighborhood in West Seattle.

The museum featured exhibits on Andy Worhal and Kurt Cobain (pictured below) that Elliot and Sessy found interesting. Cobain was a native of Washington State. They also saw myriad contemporary pieces, including a sculpture in green plastic bottles of a man, as well as some traditional, local, Native American objects, such as totem poles.

Frank and Emily parked along Alki Avenue near Alki Beach and took a walk. This neighborhood felt very “Californian” to Frank. A sandy beach along Puget Sound with the Seattle Skyline to the east provided a focal point for an eclectic mix of houses, apartment buildings and small businesses that stretched for several miles along an uninterrupted right-of-way. Very steep hills extended up several hundred feet starting from just across the road from the beach. Many hundreds of buildings dotted the hillsides on terraced lots that gave almost all of them views of the water below. Emily and Frank ran up some public stairs to the top of the neighborhood and then found their way back down the narrow, twisting streets. Once back down at beach level, we watched several games of 2-on-2 volleyball that were being played by men and women alike. Some games were obviously very competitive and the level of play was quite high.

Frank and Emily’s trip back to pick up Sessy and Elliot was delayed by a Saturday morning traffic jam caused by the Seattle Marathon. We saw bib numbers as high as 13,700, and judging by the number of people running on the double-decked portion of Washington Route 99, a main drag along the Seattle waterfront, we had no trouble believing that thirteen thousand people were participating.

Once reunited, we set out for REI headquarters on Yale Avenue. As it turns out, REI is only one of dozens of major corporations that started in the Seattle area. Others include Boeing, Starbucks, Microsoft, Expedia, Jones Soda, Mikes Hard Lemonade, Cray, Amazon.com, Nordstrom, Union Bay, T-Mobile, Weyerhaeuser, Tommy Bahama, Nintendo, Cinnabon, Costco, Eddie Bauer, Red Robin, Alaska Airlines and UPS.

REI’s flagship store was Mecca for granolas. The store is housed in a very large, four-story building that covers an entire city block, but the building, including the entrance is nearly completely obscured by a thick grove of conifers. As visitors walk through the trees, they hear and then see a waterfall that sets the mood for the retail experience inside.

The interior, built entirely of wood, is four stories tall with an open core that allows the whole place to remain bathed in natural light. It’s a great place to buy outdoor products and clothing. The College Park and Rockville, Maryland, stores are nice, but their not even in the same league as the Seattle store. Frank bought some pedals for his beach cruiser, cycling gloves and a couple pairs of wool socks.

By the time we headed for our next planned stop—Leavenworth, Washington—the clouds had lifted and bright sunshine bathed Seattle. Leavenworth, located in the Cascades Mountains, was celebrating its annual wine and food festival today. We started driving in that direction but decided that it was too late in the day to drive 100 miles each way, so we turned around and headed back to Bellevue instead. Bellevue was built on Microsoft’s successes and is similar in appearance to Reston, Virginia.

We decided to eat dinner at one of our favorite restaurants, Maggiano’s Little Italy. As we enjoyed some delicious Italian food, we noticed how many young families were in the restaurant. The area had an air of sophistication and wealth that we expected it would. What surprised us was how many living units appeared to be vacant. There must have been a dozen highrise apartment and condo buildings in downtown Bellevue that were obviously empty or close to it. We surmised that Microsoft enjoyed strong growth until the crash and the fate of land developers followed suit. We thought it would take many years for all of the available housing to be fully occupied.

We did some grocery shopping and drove back to our campground and did some laundry before heading to the relative wilderness of Mt. Rainier tomorrow. Emily and Frank took a walk along the Green River levee near our campground just as the sun was setting and snapped a photo of tomorrow’s destination.