Days 7-10: The Rest of the Trip

Let's face it, it's time to sum up.  It's been two weeks since we got back from our trip, and there's still four days to go.  Kudos to those of you who have been actually reading these insanely long blogs.

In case you missed them, here are links to Day Zero, Day One, Day Two, Day Three, Day Four, Day Five, and Day Six.

The last few days of our trip were spent in Olympia with Allie's family.  After being friends and living together for nearly seven years, I'd still never been to her house or hung out with her parents.  It was time to fix that, time to get to know the people I'd been hearing about for all these years.  And I have to say, Allie's family are good people.  I thoroughly enjoyed staying at their house, hearing their stories firsthand, and getting know them for myself.  We even managed to get Sar her driver's permit while we were there.  I'm really only going  to cover the tourist stuff we did in this blog, but in between everything I mention there are evenings and home cooked meals and mornings spent just hanging out around the family that were some of my favorite parts of the trip.

Thursday morning Allie and I set off for some time in Seattle.  Our first stop was the Space Needle.  The Space Needle, along with the Golden Gate Bridge, is going into my list of landmarks and monuments that I never thought would live up to the hype about them, but turned out to be pretty dang cool in real life.

Allie and I decided to live in style and eat at the revolving restaurant at the top of the needle.  It turned out to be a fantastic idea because it was cold and rainy and windy, and we got to watch the city swing by slowly from the warmth and comfort of an indoor table while eating roast vegetable gateau.  Someone even came by to take our free picture that we could download and email to ourselves.

It's not the world's greatest photo, but it does prove we were there.

After lunch we did head up to the observation deck, where I learned a lot more about the history of the space needle that made it even cooler.  By the time we left, I was even considering buying some sort of souvenir from the place.  Almost.  Of course we did take one picture outside on the walkway, but it was cold and wet and we booked it back inside pretty dang fast.

From there walked a cold and rainy half mile through Seattle to Pike's Place Market.  We'd both been to Pike's multiple times in the past, so we didn't spend time at every single booth, but we did see some cool things.  My favorite was this guy.

Good ragtime music in the rain?  Count me in.  We also found the Chinese ring salesman who sold me the ring I bought on my last trip to Seattle almost two years ago.  When I'd bought that ring, I'd been a bit skeptical of it.  Sam, the energetic salesman ("Buy one for you; one for your boyfriend!") assured me that it wouldn't turn my finger green, go grey instead of silver, and would only be shinier with time.  All of that for only $5.  The man was right.  I love that ring.  I only take it off to rock climb, knead dough, and wash the toilet.  So of course I bought another one.

Friday we picked up Allie's little sister from school and dropped her and her dad off at the DMV for while.  This left Allie time to show me Olympia in all it's glory.  She kept calling it "small" and "dinky."  I kept reminding here that I'm from Idaho, and that Olympia was, in comparison, New York City.  The coolest part was the library, which was located in a freakin' forest, had bear statues out front, and looked like a cabin mansion on the inside.

Have I ever mentioned that I love bears? I do.  A lot.  They scare me, but I love them.

Since we had some time to kill while Sar picked up her driver's permit, we started playing with the legos.  I was about to suggest building the tallest whatever we could, when Allie suggests something real and something hard.  She wants to build San Francisco.  So she worked on the bridge, and I worked on the skyline.  In the end, it looked pretty darn cool, and we were very proud of ourselves.

After the library, we headed to Tumwater Falls, which has some of the coolest playground toys ever.  And pretty falls (3 of them).  Apparently we didn't take any pictures of the falls, just the playground equipment.

We'll be joining the circus soon

The fearless crew.

I'm all strong and stuff!

On Saturday Allie's Dad, Allie, Allie's sister Sar, and I headed to Priest Point Park and walked through some pretty toxic mud to look at the Puget Sound.  There were dozens of signs warning us to shower after touching the ground.  But it was beautiful.  There were so many sea shells that I couldn't avoid stepping on them, and the crunch crunch made my skin crawl a bit.

After so many hundreds of pictures on the trip, we were running out of creative picture ideas. 

Percival Landing was our next stop, and we walked along the docks for a long time, looking for loons and talking.  On the way back we stopped at a store called Archibald Sisters, where you can buy anything random (absinthe flavored gum, bandaids that look like bacon, etc.).  There I bought some Star Trek fridge magnets, some pins to put on the pirate flag in my classroom, and some candles that looked like joints for my Pot-free 420 Party.

Later that day we went on a long drive with Allie's mom, which took us to Boston Harbor, where we looked at sailboats, seagulls, and beautiful water.
The next stop was Burfoot Park, where we hiked down to the beach through incredibly green forests and I geeked out on the green, and then on the water.  This trip involved a lot of me just wandering around with big eyes and sighing at the beauty and wonder of the things I saw.  It also involved a lot of me climbing on top of things and taking pictures of me dangling over things, balancing on things, and generally making my traveling companions nervous.  Except for Allie.  Allie never worried.  Angie wouldn't look when I dangled over the waterfall, Allie's dad tried to talk me out of a few mossy logs on hillsides, but Allie never batted an eye.  Either she has great faith in my balance or doesn't care very much if I fall.

Sunday morning Allie and I took one last stop at Wonderwood Park, where I walked around and sighed some more.  And then I climbed on things.  Again.

I got this idea from The Jungle Book.  I get a lot of good ideas from that book.

After that came church, then dinner, then it was time to go.  Allie's dad and her sister drove us to the airport, and we took a short flight home.  Cuny picked us up and we drove back to our apartment, dumped our junk, put on clean pajamas (packing that lightly meant that we had very few changes of clothes...very, very few), and collapsed gratefully into our own beds.  Monday morning came much too early, with a return to school, only a week until state testing, and hugely long blogs to write about our trip.

So there you have it.  The last insanely long blog post about the trip.  There are more pictures on facebook, and I have about 800 on my computer, so I really did edit this waaay down for the blog.  Overall, the trip was fantastic, and I'd do it again in a heartbeat.  Allie and I are already brainstorming about Memorial Day weekend.