This morning, we toured downtown Seattle on foot before heading out for Mount Rainier.

Best Laid Plans

For Day 13 (June 21, 2010) the plan was this:

This morning, we will get up and walk down to the Pike Place Fish Market (and maybe pick up something for Zan at the first Starbucks) to get some breakfast, before walking down to take the Seattle Underground tour. From here, we’ll hop in the car and head southeast to visit Mount Rainier National Park, where we’ll do a little bit of hiking before heading to our campsite at Iron Creek.

What Actually Transpired

This morning, we got up in our wonderfully comfortable beds, showered (!), and then walked down to the Pike Place market (after walking uphill for a block toward the water – which was weird), where we had piroshkies (or something like that – it’s a polish pastry of some sort with meat & cheese & potatoes and other stuff), stopped by the first Starbucks, and walked through the fish market. We then walked to the Seattle Underground Tour, which was quite funny, and then back to our hotel to pick up the car.
Along the way, Jordan took pictures of each of the Starbucks’ we passed in the small, circular route – a total of eight-and-a-half (or eight, if you count like normal people. Jordan says it was eight and a half, because one of the delis sold Starbucks coffee). When we had first parked at the hotel, we passed a place called “serious pie” with a long line out the door, which made Jordan really hungry for pie. Today, as we walked back to the hotel, we went out of our way to go to “serious pie” – only to find out it was a pizza joint. Jordan was quite livid to be deprived of his pie – calling down curses upon Seattle like an Old Testament prophet on a serious bender. In retaliation, he saw a bakery around the corner and went in & bought a lemon meringue pie.
From there, we headed south to Mount Rainier (which Jordan claims was named after the family of one his bestest friends), which cooperated long enough to let us take a picture of it before it covered itself up with clouds again. We then hiked to Grove of the Patriarchs and to Silver Falls (where Jordan climbed out onto a number of rock formations that we won’t tell his mother about), and then down to our campsite at Iron Creek. Upon entering the campground, the signpost transformed from a post w/ a wooden owl on top of it to a post with a large, live owl on top of it, freaking some of us out a little bit. You can see some pictures of the owl and his owlfriend below.

Odometer Start: 38382
Odometer End: 38541
Total Miles: 159 miles

Funny/Deep/Odd/Profound Observations

“The city finally decided it needed to do something about the chuckholes after an eight-year-old boy drowned in one of them. So, the newspaper suggested two solutions (neither of which was to fix the chuckhole). One, they should teach all children how to swim; and two, they make life preservers handy at each chuckhole.”

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“One of the key events in bringing the sewage problem to a head was the arrival of a shipload of crappers.”

Pictures

Here’s a link to the day’s photo album and its slide show.