Wendee & Laura's Excellent Seattle adventures!

The original Starbucks in Seattle. Really, y'all!
Copyright (c) 2012 Wendee Holtcamp

I started out my adventure in the Pacific NW with a visit to my dad and Bev's. This is a photo of the back of their van, which they have graciously allowed me to use while I'm here! I dropped Sam off at his week-long overnight camp and then hit the road to Seattle, where I stayed with my friends Francis and Laura Zera.

Laura took me on a tour of the best Seattle has to offer. Though I've been to Tacoma several times visiting my cousin, and blazed through Seattle on the way to Olympic National Park, I'd never actually seen the city. First, we went to Pike Place Market - a Seattle classic! It was so cool! I am in love with all the fresh flower bouquets!! This is Laura with the flowers. She even wrote the Insider's Guide to Seattle for Cheap Flights.

A bouquet of white flowers at Pike Place Market.

Fresh peppers at the market.

Homemade pasta! They sold some pretty cool varieties, including dark chocolate pasta! I bought some but haven't managed to cook it yet. Laura said I was like a kid in a candy store at the market. True story!

The fish market is pretty famous too. They start shouting and then they throw the fish to one another!

Another shot of the fish market.

The original Starbucks! I had just pondered aloud to Laura, I bet the original Starbuck's is somewhere here in Seattle. I wonder where? And then I saw this just outside the Pike Place Market, with a line down the street, and I was all, dude! That must be it! And sure enough, it is!

Next we visited the Seattle Space Needle, which has a bunch of museums and such nearby. We didn't go in the elevator up to the top, but we browsed in the store at the bottom.

The EMP Museum near the Space Needle. I love the exterior! And don't ask me what the heck EMP stands for, because I still can't figure that out.

The Flying Spaghetti Monster has been unleashed near the Seattle Space Needle! Really, this is a Chihuly glass sculpture but it sure looks like the FSM to me.

Next we went to Fremont, a neighborhood in Seattle. There is a giant sculpture of a troll under a freeway bridge, and it's so freaking cool! I didn't get a photo that turned out, unfortunately, but here's one on Wikipedia.

And we went to the Theo chocolate factory. I think I died and went to chocolate heaven! They had tons of samples all around and I totally pigged out. I think I ate my weight in chocolate. :) And, ahem, all the 'gifts' I bought may or may not have already been consumed...

Fremont is just weird, I guess. And that's why I like it. They have dinosaur sculptures covered in ivy (er, topiaries!). It's right on the edge of the Washington Ship Canal, and there are major offices for Google and some other corporate giants there.

We browsed the shops in Fremont and this one shop had this pack of gum that I thought was awesome. On the opposite side, it says Hell Yeah!

We ended the day at the Elliott Bay Brewhouse in Burien, a microbrewery, where I added a new beer glass to my collection. This is Laura with the beer sampler I drank (she was driving). Yum!

I spent last weekend with my son on the Central Oregon coast, and will put those pics up soon. We had a great time! I even got to see the dock that floated across the Pacific from Japan after the tsunami and which washed up in Newport, Oregon. Cool! All the sealife had been torched off, but people were climbing all over it despite the "No Trespassing" signs all over it. While there, I attended a meeting between ship and fishing industries and the US Congressmen from Oregon, which was interesting.

Last, but not least, my article on the Elwha dam removal and the return of spawning salmon and steelhead - which had been blocked from the upper reaches of the river for more than a century - is now published at Nature News online: Fish return to undammed Elwha river: First hope for salmon and trout restoration in biggest dam-removal project in US history. Check it out and let me know what you think! I will be writing more about the removal project for other pubs. 

another bohemian adventure!

Snowshoeing on Mount Rainier in Washington state.
Copyright (c) 2005 Wendee Holtcamp

I had a great day! It doesn't FEEL like it's 2am Houston time, but alas it is. I better get to bed but not before a quick update on my latest "bohemian adventure." I left my home about 245, for a 430pm flight. Had a good productive morning and played Gin rummy with the kids right before leaving. When I was at the airport ticket counter, my cell phone dropped on the floor from the check-in kiosk. I have done this before, and it has never fazed it. But this time... it died. Dead as a doorknob. When I got to the gate, I desperately tried everything to resurrect it. Nothing. Not taking the battery out, not taking the battery out for 10 minutes, not taking the SIM card out, not plugging it in… Not prayer. It just got stuck in this endless “loading” loop. I even kept that loading looop on for 30 minutes to see if it would get out of the loop and load up, but no, it just got overheated. Ack! Panic! How can I go on a trip without my cell phone! How can I survive without instant access to email, facebook, and twitter?! But eventually I surrendered, put it in my bag, and took out the battery and flew to Salt Lake City, en route to Seattle.

When I got to Salt Lake City, I did what any reasonable person would do, and I dropped it two feet onto a hard floor to see if that would jolt it into action – sort of the way a defibrillator works on the heart. OK maybe this is not what a reasonable person would do, but I'm telling you this technique has worked for me on various pieces of electronic equipment in the past, so it was worth a shot. I did this in the bathroom stall so no one would see me and report me to the cell phone police. And guess what – it worked!! No kidding!! I’m a genius!

Besides that little excitement, the 2 flights were a wee bit bumpy but nothing bad, and I had some nice conversations with the guys sitting next to me on the flights, and with a guy at the bar in Salt Lake City, who, oddly enough had just dropped his girlfriend off at Texas A&M though he was from California and in Salt Lake City at the time - small world since that's where I went to school. Not that I hang out at bars typically, but I was waiting for my salad and the bartender was charging my phone, because oddly enough after it finally worked again, the battery had gone from totally charged to about 1/4 strength. Maybe all the endless feedback loop drained it, I don't know. And in other news, while on the plane I actually got a lot done on the book chapter I was working on foreevvvveeer, so I feel soooo great about that!

Then I arrived at the Seattle airport, rented a car and drove to my cousin Holly's home where I am now showered and tucked into bed, after a nice conversation with her this evening. Tomorrow morn I am driving to Portland to work on my book and blogs at The Fresh Pot which has wireless, then going to a Wednesday potluck with my dad and Bev at his church in Longview for dinner! So au revoir my friends, catch ya again soon!