Days 10-12: Seattle, Mt. Rainer

Ed: Written Thursday evening, on the road to Crater Lake.

On Tuesday morning, we resumed our journey to Seattle. Our appreciation of the Motel 6 for having showers and being open when we got there at 11 pm vanished when we discovered that housekeeping had somehow left both men’s and women’s underwear in our hotel room. Unfortunately, we received our first speeding ticket that morning, as we were pulled over for going 81 mph (130 km/h) on a 70 mph (112 km/h) highway. It was bound to happen, I suppose, since we were going around 80 mph across the Midwest. We later saw the same police officer pulling over another car for speeding just a few miles down the road.

We got into Seattle early in the afternoon. It was wonderful to see a city again, although it took us a while to get used to the city highways, having not seen any since Minneapolis. Seattle is surprisingly picturesque. The downtown skyline was filled with modern, concrete-and-glass buildings. From the freeway, we observed short apartments filling the hills from the shoreline upwards, which is how I always imagine the French Rivera looks.

Our first goal was to get a replacement power cable for my laptop. This turned out to be a bit of a wild goose chase, since we first went north of the city, only to discover that the address we had did not exist. We then started heading back downtown, when Andrew’s mom was able to locate a Best Buy for us (which sent us back north to a suburban mall). The replacement cable was rather expensive: $90. Since it was the price to redeem my laptop though, I had no choice but to pay.

We decided to spend the afternoon visiting the Pike Place Fish Market. We parked our car some distance away, and walked through the downtown. This really brought to mind a sort of SoHo on Puget Sound: everything was clean, the buildings were aesthetically pleasing and modern, and the people were hipper than normal (we noticed a lot of long-haired men, and there were people practising a Brazilian fighting dance). We were amazed at the efficiency of Seattle’s bus system, since we noticed bus stops all over the place with lots of commuters.

One thing that I noticed was the relative ethnic diversity of Seattle. Usually, I don’t realize this, since I’ve grown up in a relatively diverse environment, but it was rather striking since we hadn’t seen such ethnic diversity since Minneapolis. There were some Indian and East Asian faces at Yellowstone, and northern Montana seemed to have a significant Native American population (we passed through both the Flathead and Blackfeet reservations), but for the large part, most people we had met were White.

The Pike Place Fish Market itself was impressive when we were there, but on reflection, it was something of a tourist trap. The spirit of Seattle seemed to be crystallized there: the store-owners and employees all seemed to be tattooed hipsters, and the stores themselves were an eclectic mix. Among other sights, we saw the original Starbucks, an artisanal cheese shop (where we could see cheese being made through the window), an accordionist on the sidewalk, shops selling spiritual trinkets, candles and soaps, little bakeries and cafes and a comic book store with an impressive collection (I sadly left without buying a replica ST:TOS phaser). The fish market was not solely a tourist destination though; it also contained shops selling organic produce, fish fresh from the docks (one gentleman was loudly announcing recently arrived fish), flowers, food products from around the world, etc.

Since it was too early to eat, we wandered over to the public library at Ricardo’s suggestion, which turned out to be a wonderful idea. The top floor was lit up incredibly by a modernist glass-and-steel lattice that gave an impressive feel of space. As we went down, I had the chance to briefly reconnect with my inner child as I felt that long-absent sense of wonder at just opening a book and reading. We had dinner at a Bolivian restaurant near the docks, which served seafood so fresh that one could swear they had caught it to order. Afterward, we wandered once again through the downtown area, passed the Space Needle and the Science Fiction museum back to our car.

When we got back to the parking lot, we found that it had been locked. Now this was a strange parking lot: it was actually an outer part of a recently-constructed apartment building’s underground parking, but it was open for public use. Since the sign had a rate for evening parking, and the lot was automated, we assumed it would be open all night. We tried to go around to find an office to the parking lot, but we only managed to get into the building’s parking garage. Since we didn’t live there, and the elevators were in a key-access only room, we were locked in the parking garage. For a few moments, we were afraid that we would have to spend an unpleasant night in the parking garage. After searching around, we pushed what we thought was a fire door to get out (fortunately, no alarm sounded). Our car was still trapped though. We tried randomly buzzing people to see if they knew how to contact the superintendent; they were kind, but couldn’t really help. At last, Ricardo found the number to the security company, and was able to call someone to let us get to our car. We made our way to a hotel near the airport. I was momentarily worried when the GPS led us to a seedy motel, but it turned out I had booked at a nicer hotel next door.

We took a late start on Wednesday morning. For one thing, we had to run some errands: a week’s worth of laundry had to be done, and we still needed to book some hotels for the later parts of our trip. After so many adventures, we found it enjoyable just to be able to relax a little bit.

In the afternoon, we took the tour at the Boeing factory. At first, I admit that I was somewhat sceptical about the visit, but I was definitely won over. The scale of the factory was just gargantuan. It’s apparently the largest building by volume in the world, which isn’t quite obvious from the outside, but became much more apparent when we went inside and saw jetliners lined up on an assembly line. Our tour guide, Christopher, had the largest mutton chops I have ever seen, and gave his well-rehearsed tour in a very professional way, regaling us with statistics and nuggets of Boeing lore, as he led us through the assembly bays for 747s, 777s and 787s. We were told that the newer 787s could be assembled in just three days (because of a glacially-slow moving assembly line used instead of having the planes being assembled individually), when the older 747s needed some 14 weeks to complete. I think this involves a fair bit of fudging the figures, since all the parts of the 747 (save the engine) are assembled on-site, while the 787 had entire wings, fuselage segments, etc. flown in and just had to be connected together.

The factory itself had 6 gigantic bays, each one eleven stories high and at least 250 meters wide (I remarked at one point that you could probably line up a few cathedrals in each of these bays). The sliding doors in front of the bays were the size of a football field each. We walked far above the assembly floor, looking down from high balconies. Below, we saw aircraft in different stages of assembly, surrounded by scaffolding, portable elevators, moving platforms, and people putting the planes together. There were huge cranes for moving entire wings, engines, tails, etc. suspended from the scaffolding above us. We could peer into cubicles, cafeterias and conference rooms, placed either on the assembly floor, or in the large rectangular blocks that served as both supports and dividers for the assembly bays. Andrew and I both remarked that the designers of the movie version of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy must have used this as their inspiration for the Magrethean planet-building factory.

We drove down to Mt. Rainier in the evening. Perhaps we have seen so many wonders, but we were a little jaded to truly appreciate the wonders of the mountains. We pitched our tent in a campground on the shores of the Ohanapecosh River. That night, we slept to the soothing sounds of running water. It wasn’t until the morning when we really began to appreciate our forested surroundings. The trees on this side of the Rockies look like they have been supersized. The trees that looked huge in Glacier were commonplace here; we must have passed at least a dozen giant trees that had died, fallen, and were being colonized by fungi.

We hiked the Cowlitz Divide Trail. In retrospect, we should really have had second thoughts when reading the description “8.5 miles [long], 2440’ [increase] in elevation”. I did some quick math: at 10 feet/story, that’s twice as tall as the World Trade Center towers. The trail started climbing right out of the parking lot, and just never stopped ascending. It wasn’t all that steep, but the climb was constant. We passed through humid old-growth forest. Gigantic trees surrounded us; fallen ones showed that they must have been a meter or more across. There was moss everywhere, and mushrooms grew from both fallen logs and still living trees. The bugs were plentiful, and in turn, so were the spiders and tree frogs. We brushed aside cobwebs at every turn and wondered how such tiny spiders could spin webs that spanned the width of the trail. We passed the Silver Falls, which resembled a region of powerful rapids more than the gentle cascades we had seen before.

Eventually, our climb took us into the snow-covered region. Weirdly, this was well below the tree-line, since giant conifers still grew above us, and new shoots still rose through the snow. Unfortunately, this also obscured the trail, and we continued on a bit, guessing where the trail must be. We thought that eventually, we would find the trail again, leaving being little markers to identify where we had been. After half an hour in the snow, we concluded that we must have lost the trail (or it was itself obscured under the snow), and were forced to turn back. We found out way back down, but it rattled us a little to realize how easily we might have become lost.

We’re revising our schedule a little bit. We’re headed to Crater Lake right now, and should get there (though pretty late) tonight. Tomorrow (Friday), we’ll spend a little bit of time at Crater Lake, and then drive down to Redwoods. The plan is to leave for San Francisco early Saturday morning, and hopefully get half of Saturday, as well as Sunday to explore Frisco.