Washington

In October last year (which means I'm only three months late in blogging about this), Cody and I took a two and a half week vacation to explore the west coast of the U.S. That means we ticked off three more states in our quest to #SeeAll50. If you thought I shared a lot of photos from our New York trip, forget about it. Today we're talking about Washington because that's where we flew in. 

We left home around 4:00AM on Friday, October 12th (thanks, Dad!) to make it to Orlando in plenty of time for our 7:00AM flight. We flew United (no complaints; great experience there and back) with a three and half hour layover in Houston which landed us in Seattle around 2:45 PM PST. We had no issues picking up our luggage and getting our rental car from Enterprise then headed out into sunny Seattle to go find our motel in the Fremont neighborhood. 

We stayed at the Marco Polo Motel (apparently one of the last places Kurt Cobain was seen alive) and while it wasn't the nicest place we stayed on this trip, it was definitely affordable and we felt safe there which were my two main priorities in finding a hotel in Seattle. Once we unloaded the car, we walked to a nearby burger joint to grab some dinner.

This was definitely my favorite food stop in Washington. Gigantic burgers and Coke floats after 14+ hours of traveling? Yes, please. We made the half-mile walk back to our motel and spent the rest of the evening with our feet up in front of some Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy before crashing for the night.

Saturday, October 13th: woke up waaay too early because we are east-coasters, baby, and tried to grab a few more z's before heading downtown to check out Pike Place Market, the Space Needle, and Chihuly Garden and Glass.

We parked in a public garage at the market and then walked to the Space Needle which was a little over a mile away. Grabbed some hot breakfast sandwiches at the McDonald's right there and then got in line for our 10:00AM slot to go to the top. Our whole experience at the Space Needle was very streamlined and fun. We had bought and printed out our tickets ahead of time, the lines weren't bad, and it wasn't overly crowded. The Space Needle has been completely renovated since the last time I was there so it was a totally different experience for me than when I went in July of '09. There is now a rotating glass floor you can stand on (which was a little trippy) and instead of thick cables on the observation deck, there are now huge glass panels which you can lean back on if you aren't too scared to try it (there were grown men at the top losing their minds). I really liked the colorful, retro-styled timeline they put together for you to look at as you waited in line for the elevator. The line actually moved more quickly than I liked because I wanted to read every detail. We took as much time as we wanted at the top and exploring the gift shop below before heading next door to Chihuly Garden and Glass.

After exploring every exhibit completely wide-eyed in wonder (my personal favorite was probably the Persian Ceiling: top right photo in the collage above), we started the walk back toward the market stopping in at CJ's Eatery for lunch. I think this was probably Cody's favorite food stop in Washington. The food was delicious and our waitress was super-friendly. I had a massive stack of blueberry pancakes that I could not have finished even if I'd wanted to and Cody had a meatloaf sandwich that he raved about for the rest of the trip.

Pike Place Market is a fun (if not somewhat overwhelming) labyrinth of shops to explore. We saw them throw the fish and I drooled over all the gorgeous fresh flower stalls. We made our mark at the Gum Wall which was fun and possibly the most crowded place we went. I dragged Cody into every little bookshop we passed and the best one by a longshot was Lamplight Books. Definitely the one to seek out if you ever find yourself in the Pike Place Market. I could have dropped a lot of cash in there, but Cody reined me in and I think we ended up with 6 or 7 books for less than $40.

When our eyes started to glaze over, we decided to go back to the Marco Polo for some down time before meeting up with my dear friend Sean Brendan for an evening of fun. We ended up meeting him at a Mexican steakhouse called Asadero (the Ballard location) before heading off to the Seattle Symphony. (Between dinner and the symphony, we ducked into the funkiest consignment shop ever and I really wish we had had more than 10 minutes to spend in there.)

After taking in Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 1 featuring pianist Behzod Abduraimov from the very front row (we could literally hear the pianist humming as he played), we made our way to the Starbucks Roastery for some late-night coffee drinks and pastries. Trying to find parking for dinner at Asadero's, the symphony, and the Roastery was without doubt the most stressful part of our entire trip, but the food, music, and coffee and the wonderful company more than made up for it.

Sunday, October 14th: beat the sun up again because a three hour time difference is just enough to really screw you, loaded up the car and checked out of the Marco Polo to get on the road for the two hour trip to Mt. Rainier National Park.

We spent the day at Mt. Rainier hiking and basking in all God's creative beauty. While we definitely passed people on the trails, most of the time we felt like we were all alone which was fantastic and at one point, we shared the trail with a mama deer and her two young fawns who didn't seem to care we were there at all.

After leaving Mt. Rainier, we had about three hours of driving down to the Washington/Oregon border where we checked into the Camas Hotel which was the sweetest spot. If we ever decided to move to Washington, I wouldn't hate living in Camas. We stayed there two nights before heading out of Washington for good.

Washington : done. 

Have you ever been to Washington? Tune back in in a few days for our Oregon adventures!