Friday, May 11, 2018

Shamelessly playing tourist in Seattle

In March of 2017, for the first time in my life, I went somewhere for Spring Break, and what's more, I went somewhere I've never been before, the Pacific Northwest. I was invited to judge at the BreyerWest model horse show in Albany, OR---most of my travel seems to be model horse show related these days---and I was excited to see a part of the country that was entirely new to me. I had originally planned to fly into Portland but my travel buddy Jackie suggested that since we'd be renting a car anyway, we ought to fly to Seattle and check out the Space Needle. A totally brilliant plan!
Somewhere over the Cascades
Approaching the Seattle airport
When the Space Needle was built as part of the 1962 World's Fair, it was the tallest building west of the Mississippi. Now it's only the 8th tallest building in Seattle, but it still presents an unmistakable  silhouette against the skyline.

Downtown Seattle
Having lived almost 20 years in Chicago with a population nearing 3 million, Seattle felt like a pleasantly laid back (almost) small town in comparison. I was only there for a few hours, but I loved it. In typical PNW fashion, it was a little drizzly at times, but we got little patches of sunshine here and there that afternoon, too.

Quite an impressive silhouette from below
The entrance to the Space Needle has an interesting exhibit about the development and design of the building.




There was a short wait for the elevators, but the view from the observation deck was totally worth it!



Water, water everywhere

Panorama from inside
Obligatory souvenir
Not long before my trip, I watched a program on my local PBS station called 10 Parks That Changed America, and I was delighted that we got to drive under one of them, Freeway Park, on our way out of town. The design of the park is rather too Brutalist for my tastes, but it still presents an interesting solution to creating useful urban green spaces. My photo does not do it justice.


After lunch and some poking around in local shops, it was time to head south to Oregon. We got stuck in fairly heavy traffic all the way down through Tacoma, but it did enable me to nerd out along the way:
Yep, that's how the band got their name!
The coastal range in the distance
It was just barely spring, but the lush green was a welcome sight!
Columbia River
Approaching the bridge into Portland

The Columbia River again
Portland
The Oregon Convention Center is hard to miss
The bridge across the Willamette River
Sideshow Bob says hello!
Sunset behind the coastal range
I can hardly wait to go back to Washington and explore more of it! I want to see Olympic National Park, Mount St. Helen's and Mt. Rainier, I want to drive down the coast, I want to cross over the Cascades and see the eastern part of the state, and I especially want to drive through the Columbia River Gorge along the WA-OR border, just to name a few things.

One thing I did check off my bucket list was a trip to see the Pacific Ocean, but much more on that in the next post!

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