Seattle

Some trips just seem to go so smoothly that you can’t believe it’s all that easy. This has been one of those trips. Josh’s little sister, Megan, was kind enough to take us to the airport at o’dark thirty on Saturday. We got there, checked our bags, grabbed breakfast, sat down for a few minutes and then boarded the plane. We didn’t sit around bored for any amount of time. We didn’t have to run through the airport because we were late. It was just perfect timing.

During the flight we sat by Chatty McChatterson. She is from Seattle, out on business, felt the need to tell us how cool she was and how much money she makes. She’s a recruiter for a trucking company, and she’s a big enough whig that she took the company jet out to Salt Lake, but for some reason was flying Southwest back. I guess she’s not that big of a whig.

She told us all about her kids, her job, her house (unfinished basement, her youngest son and his 3 friends live in it) her childhood, fishing, crabbing, and living by the river. Surprisingly I enjoyed listening to her stories. Normally that (talking to strangers, rather listening to stranger jabber on about nothing at all) is Josh’s area of expertise, and I’m starting to see why he likes it.

Josh, by nature is a listener – I am a talker. We make a good pair…..I think.

When we got to Seattle, we called Spence (my brother, nothing like mooching off family) to come and get us, and we went to his house. Which, by the way, is beautiful. He and his family live in Bellvue, which is beautiful. Seriously. We pulled up to their house, and there’s a “forest” right in the front yard. The grass is green and there are trees everywhere. You can’t even see the front of their house from the street because of all the trees.

Our first tourist place was “The Locks”. Now, if you’re like me you don’t know what “the locks” are, or even what one “lock” is. For some reason, they put gates between the ocean and Lake Washington. So, when boats go from one to the other, they have these little check points. They’ll close gates on both sides of the boat (so they’re ‘locked’ in), and either drain or fill the water inside “the lock” so the water level is even with the place they are going.

Why they need to do this is beyond me, but it turns out to be a fun process to watch. We watched a bunch of boats come in, some small speed boats, some sailboats, some yachts (I’m not sure what makes it a yacht instead of a boat, but I’m gonna say there were yachts there….go ahead and correct me if you know better) and even what Emily called a “cruise ship”, we kindly corrected her and told her that cruise ships are far too huge to fit in a “lock” and she should just wait until she saw a REAL cruise ship.

After the ship, came the fish ladders – my brother is an engineer, and kindof a geek. (For fun, he studies fluid dynamics. Really.) So, he was enthralled with the path of the water and honestly, so were we. His kids are the children of geeks, so they correctly identified and drew our attention to the “vortex” created by the water coming down the fish ladders.

By the time we left the locks, it was beautiful outside. The sun was shining, I’ll bet birds were singing, although we didn’t hear them. It was amazing. So, to the beach we went.

We dug for crabs, oysters, clams, anything alive pretty much. We didn’t find anything digging, but we saw starfish, sand dollars, and a lot of small crab carcasses. We felt the sand between our toes, and cool water rushing around our ankles. It was truly beautiful. We even got a little red from the sunshine – which would wouldn’t expect in Seattle, but hey we’ll take any color we get!