Playing hooky on the last day of school

Day 9
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
Sightseeing in Seattle

We took our time this morning, blogging and catching up on Facebook and the news. We commented to each other that neither of us has missed TV at all over the past week. It’s amazing how many other things you do when you don’t watch any TV!

Today was the last day of school in Howard County. Elliot and Emily will go for three hours and then it will be summer. Tomorrow they will fly to Seattle to meet Frank and accompany him to Canada and, eventually, home. This meant that today was Bob’s last day on the road with Frank. As such, Frank told Bob that it was his call as to what we would do and see today.

Bob said that our planned search for Big Foot has been officially called off because Frank refuses to don the female Big Foot suit. Bob said he could not wear the suit because he was already tasked with videography. Bob then fired Frank as his wingman saying if he won’t wear the suit he can’t be counted on when the chips are down. Our first squabble in 3,300 miles…

Instead we planned to take the ferry from the wharf in downtown Seattle to Bainbridge Island and back. Ferries are a way of life in the Seattle area where large peninsulas and islands are home to thousands of people who would be physically cut off except for seaborne transportation. The boat we took was huge—at least as big as the Staten Island Ferry boats. Unlike the New York ferries, these boats can haul cars and they are not free. Our roundtrip with a car and two people cost $35. When in the open air on the bow of the boat, even with sunshine, it was very chilly. The water under us had to be frigid.

Bainbridge Island has a vacation town feel to it. It is quite large and has a number of small towns, each with a main drag lined with quaint stores. There are very few franchises or big box stores there. We spoke to several residents who said both the cost of living and quality of life are high on Bainbridge. Many Bainbridge residents take the ferry as pedestrians and either walk, bike or take public transportation to jobs in Seattle. There is no extra charge for bringing a bike on board.

Frank had been curious about Bainbridge Island for a long time so he wanted to spend some time exploring. We found it to be heavily treed throughout with varying population densities. In places there were multiple-family dwellings, single-family dwellings on 1-acre lots and farms. We window-shopped and ate lunch in Winslow, the town where the ferry lands. Frank said Bainbridge will go on the list of places he would consider living in the future.

After returning to Seattle, we drove a few blocks to Safeco Field and bought tickets to the Mariners-Cubs game. Just as in Baltimore, Philadelphia and many other cities, Seattle has built two new stadia next to each other, one for football and one for baseball. Both are attractive, but nothing that special. The baseball stadium has a retractable roof to allow for play on rainy days. The football stadium has a roof over most of the stands, but not the field. This is sort of ironic because it rains a lot more here during football season than baseball season.

We next parked our car for the day in the football stadium’s parking lot and set out northward on foot toward the other attractions that interested us. Seattle’s downtown is more linear than most cities, stretching roughly 2 miles along the shore of Elliott Bay/Puget Sound (Elliott Bay is close in and Puget Sound is farther out, but it’s the same bit of water, similar to Baltimore Harbor and Chesapeake bay). There are some very tall buildings in Seattle. Six are more than 60 stories tall and several others are more than 50 stories. We learned today that the Space Needle, at slightly more than 600 feet is the seventh tallest structure in Seattle. The skyline is impressive as viewed from the water.

In Seattle, the avenues run parallel to the Bay’s shoreline (north and south) and the streets run perpendicular to it. The vast majority of both are numbered. There are a few named streets in the center city. Many are “ways” instead of “streets.”

We walked up First Avenue until we hopped on a free bus traveling in the direction we were headed. We got off near the Space Needle, waited in line, bought tickets and went to the top. The Space Needle was built in 1962 as part of the World’s Fair that year. The area around the Needle, also built for the fair, is showing its age. This is not the first time we’ve seen former World’s Fair districts that looked tattered and sad years later. The weather was atypically clear and sunny for Seattle. Locals told us that today was the first day this year that reached 75 degrees and that they have had a lot of rain this spring (where have we heard that before on this trip?) We went outside onto the observation deck and snapped pictures in every direction. Nice experience.

As we left the Needle, we ran into Frank’s high school classmate, Erik Thomas, who lives in Bellingham, Washington, 90 miles north of Seattle, and who was touring the World’s Fair area with his sister and nephew who were visiting from Japan. Later, Erik and the nephew joined us at the Mariner’s game. It was good to see him again, although Frank was puzzled as to why he looks older and Erik doesn’t!

We then walked to Pike Place where a famous and popular, open-air fish market is located. Workers on the public’s side of the counter take orders from customers and then shout the orders to their co-workers behind the counter. Once the order has been packaged, the workers behind the counter throw, sometimes with some velocity, the bag of fish to the workers in front of the counter. This spectacle of yelling and tossing fish around has made an everyday retail stand a renowned sensation that travel and management books have detailed. We watched for about 5 minutes, smiled a bit and moved on.

We continued along the two miles or so to the baseball stadium, Safeco Field, and arrived in time to hear the national anthem and see the first pitch. The Mariners won by a score of 8 to 1 and the Mariner’s pitcher, Cliff Lee, threw a solid, complete game.

We were impressed with the turnout that the Mariners, a last-place team, got on a Wednesday night. It was a lot more people than the Orioles draw. There were quite a few Cubs fans, but, still, we got to see firsthand how poorly the O’s are being supported these days.

We drove back to the campground and collapsed in our bunks. It was a great day to not be in school.