All. Of. The. Time.
Okay, so maybe coming from an arid climate in Colorado isn't helping the sensation, but I haven't felt completely dry the entire time I've been here. I think Corbin agrees. What's worse is once you get something wet, it never dries. Ever. "Perpetual dampness" should be Seattle's nickname.
Complaining about rain and humidity aside, Seattle has been a pretty rad place for a visit even though we're not too keen on cities. We drank a lot of coffee, explored a bunch of parks, and hung out with some much missed friends. Here's our overview:
Pre-Seattle: Harley Haul
Our friend Mike Gough (aka Goof), flew out to Denver on the 20th late at night. After both Corbin and I each finished celebrating our last day of employment with friends, we picked him up and went straight to sleep for the start of our journey. The next morning was a whirlwind of packing and prepping, making sure the Harley and Goof were set to ride, and took off.
And then we pulled back into the driveway because we forgot to change the air filter on the truck (sitting in the Amazon box on the porch).
And then we left.
And by left I mean that we stopped by the storage unit to drop off a couple last minute desertions and swung by my place of employment for a farewell cup of coffee. And then we stopped at the gas station.
And then we left.
Or tried to at least. We discovered that with two vehicles, making clear and explicit plans was crucial, as we lost Goof on the motorcycle leaving the adjoining supermarket parking lot. In our defense it was a big parking lot. And the construction was confusing. I digress.
We settled on the I-80 corridor after keeping a diligent eye on the weather. The Rockies almost always have snow by mid to late October but with clear weather we decided to brave the Wyoming winds to save several hours of drive time. Our journey was 1,247 miles, which with the number of times we took a wrong turn or a side trip, was more like a nice round 1,300 miles. All done in less than 36 hours.
Our biggest priority was getting through the Rockies before there was snow and getting through the dying typhoon which had just wrecked the Pacific Northwest which we were sure was going to soak the boys to the bone and make the going cold and wet and exhausting.
Looking back, the worst bit we ran into was the high winds in Wyoming. There were 50+ MPH winds that had Corbin practically riding sideways. The mountains were dry and we didn't run into much rain until we went through Idaho, and even that was pretty sparse. The only other place we got much rain was coming into Seattle.
Seattle Proper: Trees and Beaches
Corbin and I aren't really big on cities. They make me feel nervous and on edge. So while we enjoyed walking around the city proper, most of our outings were to get us to the many city parks that Seattle boasts.
Carkeek Park was our first stop, and the trail winds through what one would consider the closest thing you can come to jungle in the middle of a huge metropolis. We meandered through this jungle noticing that Seattle has a huge population of rather large spiders and enjoying the sun while it lasted. The trail then let out on the Puget Sound where Mike and Corbin skipped rocks for ages.
Next up was Volunteer Park in the middle of the gorgeous Capitol Hill neighborhood. One of my favorite websites to look up interesting hikes and parks is The Outbound Collective, which is where I had learned of this park and the water tower you can climb. The view of downtown from the top of the 100 year old water tower was worth the 107 steps.
Golden Gardens had a nice stroll on a sandy beach with welcoming fire pits, park benches, and the most awesome jungle gym ever. There's a little estuary where ducks and cranes were splashing about. Really beautiful scenery and rocks to jump on admiring the squishy sea anemones hiding while the tide was down.
Discovery Park was probably one of the coolest parks we visited. Its as close to a wilderness that you can get in the middle of a city. There was paved trails with little dirt offshoots throughout the unbelievably mossy and green forest. There's a loop trail that's just over two miles that we wandered on but I have a feeling we didn't see more than a third of the whole park.
Unfortunately, Chelsea couldn't make it to the Olympic peninsula with me, but I had a blast camping out and mushroom hunting in the woods. Olympic National Forest was magical, as always. The place is a mystical wonderland that always seems surreal and implausible to my Midwestern instincts. The stumps of huge long-dead conifers sprout a myriad of mushrooms and fungi and the canopy is so dense its always twilight. We were after chanterelle mushrooms and trying to avoid their poisonous mimic neighbors. We ended up with a couple pounds of bright orange prizes, and according to a local Seattle chef, didn't pick any of the wrong kind!
The Pacific coast in Ocean City was one of the most impressive sights I've seen in recent history. Perhaps because the conversation was on tsunamis, I was totally hypnotized by the force of the surf and the ludicrous power of the incoming tide. At one point, I asked our host Peter, "If you just walked straight out, how long till you die?" He seemed pretty optimistic, but I couldn't imagine swimming in it for a minute.
Seattle Proper: Eats, Drinks, and Books
My favorite food by far, was a Cuban sandwich from Paseo Carribean Restaurant. Cubano sandwiches are just about my favorite damn food and this one was the best I've ever had. The pork was some kind of smash tenderized which left it with an interesting texture. I noticed this for about half a second before I ate the entire thing and quietly debated finding a way to consume the dripping waxpaper wrapper it came with. If I have my way, I'll get another before I leave town if I can possibly convince Chelsea and we aren't running late. My only critique was that it was super sugary, but food stands know we all love sugar, fat, and salt and there's no way to change that. Honorable mention goes to the 3 dollar breakfast at the casino on the Olympic peninsula. I bought six breakfasts for the price of three coffees in the city and everyone ate well and drank copiously of the free coffee which was about quintuple strength and located on the gambling floor (coffee in the restaurant/bar with the breakfast was 3 dollars a cup) but they didn't mind us "cheating" at the game and bringing it in with us.
Corbin and I had our first set of raw oysters at our friend Sam's sister restaurant, The Carpenter and the Walrus. It was a really quaint kitchen with a comfy set up and friendly staff. We had a few different kinds of oysters, to get the full spectrum of slime, salt, and deliciousness. Corbin wasn't a huge fan of the consistency, but we can officially cross the slimy buggers off our list and had a great experience in the process.
We enjoyed more than our fair share of coffee, whether just for a quick drip coffee to get us moving or a fancy latte with foam art and everything. I mean, it's Seattle, you have to drink coffee. At the Fremont Coffee Company, we met up with some friends of friends of ours, Ian and Rebecca, and chewed the fat and found out some local must-do's. These meet ups are some of my favorite. Basically strangers tied together by knowing the same person, who get together for no other reason than to have a lovely conversation with someone new.
I have a confession to make. While we spent a lot of time and energy scaling back on possessions in order to fit our whole life into a truck, Corbin and I both have a soft spot for books. Per Lonely Planet's suggestion, we went to Elliot Bay Book Company for a coffee and perusing. And by perusing I really mean we bought two books. We justified it by saying that if we aren't in love with keeping the title, we'll swap them out for the rest of the trip in the little free book libraries that we found all over Seattle and we hope to continue finding all over the company.
We spent a whole week in the Seattle area, which is more time than we're planning on spending in most of our destinations. Mostly it was due to the exhausting haul through three states to get the motorcycle to Seattle before snow threatened. It also gave us a moment to get our ducks in a row and prepped for the rest of the trip. Turns out, trying to work and pack and prep the truck was hard to do and we left a lot of things undone when we left Fort Collins that we used a couple days in Seattle to catch up. Of course, we were happy to do all of this prep work somewhere we could spend some much needed time with some of our oldest friends.
Next Up: Oregon
We're on our way through Oregon with some random stops along the way before we make it to Bend to visit with our friend Matt. We're pretty excited to get to see a state that neither of us have visited before, and we're keeping our fingers crossed for a lapse in the rain so we can dry out a bit! Be sure to check out the Photos tab for more photos from Seattle and our Instagram feed!