Summer in the City (with my Dad)

While my dad was in Seattle, after our massive roadtrip, we had a week to experience the best Seattle has to offer. The weather was excellent, it was terrific! I wanted to make sure that Bruce had seen the most awesome parts of the city, so we took a few excursions out. I took Bruce to a few different suburbs and to my favourite places downtown, and then also to my favourite eateries around Seattle (because one just cannot have the whole experience without trying all the food!!).

Edmonds Village:

Edmonds village is a quaint little village, full of small boutique shops and restaurants, cafes and bakeries. It bears similarity to the Auckland area of Mt Eden Village, or Parnell. On Bruce's first night in the States I brought him here. We ate a delicious chicken quesadilla at a cosy rustic cafe/restaurant, then wandered up the road to a frozen yoghurt shop - we filled up on all sorts of yummy types of yoghurt and all sorts of toppings. We then walked back down the road and went to a small local bar where a live band were performing. It was a fantastic night, and the live music was just the icing on the cake.  

Dinner and live music in Edmonds village

Ballard:

After we returned from our roadtrip I was back to work, so I did not have much time, but in my time off I organised little outings for us. One of them was to Ballard. Ballard is the suburb where my church is so by default I spend a LOT of time there!, but Ballard is an amazing suburb, so lively and upbeat, it has a great vibe to it and a lot going on. In Ballard there is a super duper awesome cupcake shop called Cupcake Royale, so one morning Bruce and I popped in there and enjoyed an incredible cupcake and a hot drink. Tu meke! 

Downtown Seattle:

I just had to take Bruce downtown. The most important thing to see was Pike Place Market, one of my favourite places in Seattle. The market closed at 6pm, and I finished work at 5, so we took off and raced into town to get there on time. We parked in a hurry and ran down to the market. We got there just in time! We bought cheesecake from my favourite cheesecake shop The Confectional, then we walked around the market, saw the famous gum wall, listened to the buskers and saw the fish mongers packing up for the day. It was great that we were able to see everything! The evening was so lovely that we took a walk down from the market to the waterfront and walked along the piers. On one of the piers we saw the newly erected Seattle Great Wheel and, on the spur of the moment, we decided to go on it! 

We had to wait in line for a long time, so we bought ice creams to make the time go faster. When we got inside our little pod, two couples joined us, one couple was from Seattle and the other was from Texas. They were all such great people and the 20 minute ride was fantastic because of them. We chatted about travel, swapped ideas for places to visit within the city, and gazed out of the windows at the beautiful view. The couple from Seattle suggested some things for Bruce and I to visit, and even helped find the places on a map so it would be easy for us to get to. We left the wheel feeling excited!

One place I had always wanted to go to but never had was the Olympic Sculpture park. The Seattleite couple in our wheel pod had showed me on the map where it was so Bruce and I decided to walk down there. It was fantastic! Such interesting pieces, and on such a large scale.

Olympic Sculpture park

After walking through the park we headed back to the car, popping in at the Vine Street community garden just for a look on the way. We then drove to the Space needle area, and found a park right across the road (whoohoo!). We did not go up the space needle, instead we went next door to the recently opened Glass Garden - a showcase gallery/experience of glassworks by renowned Seattle artist Dale Chihuly. I knew nothing about the place, it was the Seattle couple on the wheel who recommended this to us! Boy, am I glad they mentioned it! It was a delight to the senses. My eyes were popping out of my head with the colours and the beauty of all this glass! It was like nothing I had ever seen before. You walked from one area to another and the glass pieces were all so different and so unique and amazing. It was really something special.

Wow, this was a glass ceiling. Can you believe it? It is just so beautiful.

Unique works in the glass garden

the planets

WOW!

A glass vine of flowers with the space needle in the back

A glass plant (at least 2 metres high) with the space needle behind

After the glass garden we stumbled across a free outdoor screening of Harry Potter. We sat on the grass and watched it until we got too cold and we went back to the car and drove home. What a night! Seattle really showed its best face. 

Bruce's Projects:

While Bruce was staying with us, he ended up doing all these projects. One was to build a guinea pig house for the 2 guinea pigs so that they could be put outside and have a warm house to live in. And the other was that Bruce decided he wanted to paint all the ceilings downstairs to lighten the place up a bit. What can I say? It hardly came as a shock to me, and I was happy that Bruce had something he enjoyed doing to work on while I was with the kids. My host family were thrilled that he was doing the ceilings! 

Painting the ceilings: such a typical Bruce thing to end up doing :)

On his last night in Seattle, I managed to drag him away from his projects and we had a lovely meal at a local Mexican restaurant.

Soon enough, it was the final day of his stay and time to drop him to the airport. I had to literally pull him off his projects to even get him to leave the house to be in time for the plane! (haha why is that so familiar?). There was one last thing I wanted him to try: Seattle is not Seattle without Paseo Caribbean food stall, so I stopped in there on the way to the airport for his last meal. Paseo make the most amazing sandwiches ever, they are huge, messy and delicious. 

Bruce was overwhelmed with how big it was!

We ate our wonderful sandwiches then tore off to the airport. I dropped him off, we said a brief goodbye and he was away!

Farewell!

It was so neat to share Seattle with Bruce, and my host family's kids loved him so much, they still pretend to talk to him on the phone, and they also sometimes call him for dinner! haha.

Have Discovery Pass, Will Travel

The other week, while my car was at the mechanic (boo hoo hoo) I went for a walk and went to the Subaru car dealership nearby. They had a special deal going where you could take a car for a test drive and they would give you a free discovery pass. A discovery pass allows you free entry into every single state park in Washington State, and there are hundreds of them! Normally it costs $30 for the pass, but with this special deal I could get it for free! So I took a beautiful 2012 Subaru Outback for a test drive, a $30,000 car, which was a lot of fun to drive and cool to try, and got my free discovery pass!! I was so happy.

It was in good timing as well, since I have just looked over my 'list' of places I wanted to visit in Seattle and Washington and found I have seen all of them, well, all but a few. Now with my discovery pass I have a new goal - see as many state parks as possible! The parks are beautiful, all natural beauty and beaches, forests, waterfalls etc.

In my excitement at the freedom my new pass gives me, I visited 4 state parks in one day. And boy how beautiful they were! I'm beginning my list and will update it as I visit more parks.

1. Lake Wenatchee

2. Mt St Helens

3. Mt Rainier

4. Fort Casey

5. Fort Townsend

6. Scenic Beach

7. Kopachuck

Where will I end up next? Watch and see! :)

A Roadtrip of Gargantuan Proportion

For a long time I have been trying to convince my dad, Bruce to come and visit me in the states and do a big roadtrip with me to the Black Hills of South Dakota. Bruce has always wanted to see the massive sculpture of Crazy Horse, the great Native American chief, carved into a cliff. It is the already the biggest sculpture in the world, and so far they have only completed the head! It is much much bigger than Mt Rushmore, and only 30 minutes drive from Mt Rushmore. Important for me was to see Yellowstone National Park, so we made sure to fit that in too. In the end we went to many more places than we anticipated. We went through a total of 5 states (Washington, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, South Dakota) and drove 3100 miles. 

Each state we passed through was a different experience, different because of the landscape and different towns, different stores; but also a different experience based on how we were feeling and what time of day or night it was. Some little towns were a refuge for us, providing us with hearty meals and warm showers. Other towns were special treats for us - delighting us and rejuvenating us for our next leg of the journey. Our trip was to the Black Hills of South Dakota, but it became so much more than that because the journey was all part of the destination, the journey was our holiday. What was also great was that we chatted to all sorts of different people and asked for their opinions on what to visit. Because of that, we went down highways and byways, to different towns, monuments and sights we would not have seen otherwise. Having those little detours made the trip extra special. 

Some of my best memories were just driving down huge stretches of free way, sunroof open, windows open, music blaring, cruise control on (whenever it decided to work), bed in the back; absolutely free in the knowledge that I was living out my dream. All my life I have wanted to road trip America, and here I was, with my very own car, driving for thousands of miles, sleeping in the back, singing at the top of my lungs, laughing and joking with my dad, eating on the run, and sleeping in rest stops. Even thinking about it now makes me smile because honestly I just loved it, every minute. 

Friday:

After driving all night from Seattle, we arrived at Spokane about 5am. We had breakfast at Dennys and then drove through the early morning dawn in Idaho and Montana. We stopped a few times along the way, and we ended up staying the night in a motel in Sheridan, Wyoming.

Beautiful dawn mist in Idaho

Bruce and I in small town America, St Regis, Idaho

The packed Stallion!

Father and Daughter chillin in the Stallion

Saturday:
We left the motel in Wyoming in the late morning and headed on our way to South Dakota. We stopped at Devil's tower on the way at the suggestion of a biker, and then arrived in Custer, South Dakota (home of Crazy Horse monument) at around 9pm, just in time to watch the laser show on Crazy Horse mountain! Incredible! That night we slept in a tipi, thus fulfilling my childhood dreams!

The long open road

Stopping to make snacks - crackers with avocado and tomatoes - gourmet roadtrip fodder! 

the gal loves her Stallion!

This is Devil's Tower. It is the monument made famous in the movie Close Encounter (aliens on Earth, do you remember?). We were not planning on visiting this at all, but on one of our bathroom breaks we got chatting to a bikie who suggested we take this detour, and boy was it worth it! What a neat sight to see on the landscape!

Looking up at the lines and crevasses on the tower. 

It was here at Devil's tower that I saw my first prairie dog. I had mentioned to Bruce how cool it would be to see one, and people had mentioned that they could be seen at the base of devil's tower. At first I could not see any, but then, as we looked at the fields more and more, we began to notice them everywhere! and they really were everywhere! They were so cute and tame!

I was able to live out another one of my dreams: to sleep in a tipi! It was near the base of Crazy Horse, and so we were able to sleep there (fulfilling my childhood dream) and then be right at Crazy Horse monument for the morning! Perfect!

Sunday: On Sunday we went to Crazy Horse, then over to Wall to the Wounded Knee museum and the roadside famous Wall Drug store, then over to Mt Rushmore, through Sturgis (to see the motorbikes of course!) and then we took off and drove all the way to Sheridan, Wyoming and slept in a rest stop in the back of the Stallion before our big long haul drive to Yellowstone.

Crazy Horse monument as it stands right now - just the head is completed, the rest of it, including a horse's head and Crazy Horse's arm, are yet to be created by blasting away rock with dynamite. 

The scale of this face is beyond belief! Look how small we are compared to Crazy Horse's lips!

So it just happened to be that while we were on our trip, a massive motorcycle rally at the nearby town of Sturgis was on, flooding the entire area with approximately 400,000 bikers on their Harley's! It was so fantastic!

Wall Drug

Mt Rushmore

All the bikies hanging out at the pub

Monday:
Monday was a big day, we raced across Wyoming to get to Yellowstone national park, drove all through the park. Bruce was not feeling so well, so he slept in the back pretty much the entire time. We saw Old Faithful blow, I saw buffalo, elk, deer, black bears and even a coyote! We also had a lovely lunch. When we had seen all that we had wanted to we drove down through the Grand Teton mountains (which were incredible!), in to Jackson, Wyoming. We had a shower and a meal there and then left towards home - driving all night through Idaho back into Washington.

6am, rest stop outside Sheridan Wyoming

Big Horn National Park on the way to Yellowstone

Made it!

Beauty in Yellowstone

Herd of buffalo

Old Faithful blowing its top!

The beautiful Grand Tetons. 

We got home on Tuesday at 5.30pm. Wow what a trip. It was just incredible! I loved every second of it!