Chapter 11: Top Pot, Ballard Locks and Olympic Sculpture Park

Our last day together as a big group had us in the city of Seattle one last time. 

We couldn't leave Seattle without sampling one of its famous coffee and donut shops, so this day started with a stop in Top Pot Doughnuts' flagship shop.

Donut-loving Delia had to take a bite of just about every kind that came in the dozen we ordered.  They were all delicious!  We each had a favorite.

After Top Pot, we headed over to the Ballard Locks for an interesting lesson on how life near the Sound works.  With all the different bodies of water in Washington, and Seattle especially, boats need to use locks to pass from one to another since the water levels are not the same.   A salmon fish ladder showing how even the sea life gets from one water level to the next and this fun wave sculpture (above) were some other features to explore.

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The Ballard Locks are some of the busiest in the world and in the hour we spent here we did see countless boats pass through. Some were little speed boats, some were big, glamorous yachts and one was this humongous freight liner.  The big doors closing, the attendants tying the boats to the sliding walls and the boats then rising or dropping when the "plug" was pulled were super interesting and something we could have watched all day.

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Kyle did some great research on the town of Ballard and had a whole list of cool movie, book and coffee shops for us to browse.  Our favorite was a game store featuring an awesome kid play area, a puzzle work station and a policy that allowed you to borrow any game, sit down in the coffee shop and play it!  You know we VMs love playing games, so this store was right up our ally!

Mom and Dad treated us a delicious dinner in the city, which we followed with a walk through the nearby Olympic Sculpture Park.  The views of the Space Needle were great, even if some of the "art" was questionable.

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The night ended with an Olympic Opening Ceremonies viewing party.  Early fights had us saying our goodbyes this night.  It is never easy to say goodbye to our family members and especially after spending such a stellar week together.  I think it may be why I am so obsessed with pictures and jumping right into memory preservation on the blog.  We are so blessed; how God smiled on us all week!  I just wanna tell everyone right away! :)

Chapter 10: Dungeness Spit

When we started looking more into my original plan to spend a day at Deception Pass, we realized it would be about another 6 hours in the car and a pretty costly ferry ride.  We settled on the much closer Olympic Peninsula with the hope that the ocean views and wildlife would look sort of similar. 

Another drive, another short hike through the woods and we were at our destination-- the Dungeness Spit.  In the woods, the girls found a banana slug to show Grandma, Grandpa and Uncle Kyle who've never seen one!

The Dungeness Spit is a five mile finger of land that stretches and curls way out into the water.  At the end is a lighthouse you can walk all the way out to.  We did not.  Two bodies of water meet at the Dungeness Spit-- Puget Sound and the Straight of Juan De Fuca.  It was really cool to walk along and see a view of waves lapping to both the left and the right!

Another neat thing about this beach was the half mile of balance beams and playground the huge pieces of driftwood offered the girls.  We spent a long time here and most of it was climbing, hiding in, balancing on and playing with the giant and gnarled wood pieces.

We found this long, flat log where a hundred visitors before us had made and left their own stone towers.  Pretty neat!  We had to add to the display, of course.

This was sure an interesting landscape, like one we'd never seen before.  And like many parts of this trip, the unique things we saw here will hold a prominent place in my memories.

Chapter 9: Mt. Rainier

This chapter of our Pacific Northwest story is probably my favorite!  We were all really looking forward to spending a day at Mt. Rainier National Park, and the majesty of creation that we experienced on this day far exceeded all our expectations.  Yosemite has always been my favorite National Park because I kind of feel like it's "mine" and I know it the best, but after a day at Mt. Rainier, I don't know!  This place was incredible!  One thing we loved most was being here on a beautiful, summer day and seeing very few other people!  Unheard of at Yosemite.

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Even Kaya and McKenna couldn't possibly miss out on these great views!

The over 14,000 ft. tall snow-capped mountain stands at center stage of this National Park, but there were many, many other glorious things to see too-- rivers with rushing rapids, other mountain ranges, waterfalls and deep canyons.
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The night before, Ella lost a big front tooth, so she was testing our her new smile ("thmile" she called it!) on Mt. Rainier day. 

Another remarkable thing about Mt. Rainier is all the wildflowers!  Every bit of green around the mountain was dotted with color from all the different growing plants.  I never learned officially why wildflowers are in such abundance, but I think it must have something to do with all the precipitation.

Check out the blue of that sky!  In our park map it said something like, "If you are here on a clear, sunny day, you are lucky!  You get to see the mountain in its entirety with an unsurpassed view.  If you are here on a gray, overcast day, you are lucky!  You get to see the mountain as it naturally appears for the majority of the year."  Over and over we just thanked God for giving us such an amazing day (a whole week, actually!) of weather to experience Mt. Rainier at its best.

We found some picnic tables among snow piles, so after lunch yet another July snowball fight broke out.  This time Grandpa was the victim of Delia's point blank attack!

We spent the day in Paradise-- literally!  The park is huge and the section we chose to explore was named "Paradise."  Here, Dave and I attempted a little half-mile hike, straight uphill to the Alta Vista point.  A snow-covered trail stopped us though, as did my complete poop-out from trying to climb so high so quickly.  Dave rocked it, though, and ventured even further than I did.

 

I know that even my words and these pretty good pictures can't do the beauty of Mt. Rainier justice.  You probably just have to see it for yourself to appreciate it, so if you're ever in the Pacific Northwest, a stop at this National Park is a MUST!!

Chapter 8: Port Defiance Zoo and Aquarium

At this point in the vacation, we were probably going on 30 hours in the car, and, as you read, the day before was spent doing mostly adult-stuff in the city.  We knew this day needed to be something close by and all about the kids.  The Port Defiance Zoo and Aquarium fit that description perfectly! 

This was a fantastic zoo!  It had a good variety of animals and big ones too, like polar bears, walruses, elephants, tigers and sharks.  It also had tons of these awesome kid play areas and interactive exhibits.  What Delia is lying in above is actually a replica of what is in the monkey enclosure!  So you can watch the monkeys, and then be a monkey!  Below, Ella is dressed as a scuba diver and completing her mission to receive a prize from the zookeeper.  Cool, right?

This was a zoo and aquarium and we LOVED the way the aquarium was divided up-- into all the different bodies of water the state of Washington contains.  We learned that one of the best places in the world to find our favorite giant octopus is under the Tacoma-Narrows bridge, a bridge we drove over every single day!

The zoo outing ended with a really grand wild animal show, with big birds flying overhead and small animals on stage teaching about their habits and habitats.  This play day at the zoo was exactly what we needed it to be at just the right spot in the week!

Chapter 7: Seattle Space Needle and Public Market

If the rental house we stayed in for the week had any drawback, it was that it was not quite as close to the city of Seattle as I imagined.  Instead of spending the majority of our vacation in the city, we actually only did intentionally Seattle stuff twice.  Our first day crossed a bunch of big things off the Seattle Must Do List:

First up, the obvious-- Space Needle.  Ella, who's not so down with heights or elevators, chose to stay at "Space Base" and Dave stayed with her.  Mom, Dad, Kyle, Delia and I stopped for our complimentary green screen photo and then ascended quickly to the observation deck in the glass elevator.

The observation deck had an inside and an outside place to view the city.  Outside was very, very windy and cold, but a great view of all of Seattle and Puget Sound was enjoyed as we made our way around the circular tower twice.

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After the Space Needle we headed right over to the #2 Seattle destination-- the Pike Place Public Market.  This was totally different than was I was imagining.  The 3 story market was sooo crowded, we had to just jump into the flow of people and slowly make our way through it.  As we did, we saw fish markets with impressive seafood displays (no fish mongers tossing the fish, though), florists, craft stands selling homemade soaps, jewelry and art, and fruit stands each boasting the best, sweetest, most juicy Rainier Cherries.  We got some and they were.

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Across from the Public Market is the famous original Starbucks.  We each took off on our own to find whatever lunch sounded best (Beechers homemade mac and cheese and grilled cheese for me and the girls!), then we met up at the Starbucks for a treat.  The girls were super excited about ordering their very first and very own Frapuccinos (chocolate chip and decaf caramel) from this special Starbucks.  Yes, the lines were insane.  No, the place didn't look too much different than any other Starbucks, except maybe a little older, but now we can say we've shared this experience!

Another stop at the market is the famous gum wall.  We "Ewwww"ed over it, then added our own gobs to it.

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We followed our time at the market with a little trip to visit the Freemont Troll.  I kept hearing about and finding pictures of this guy and it was the thing the girls said they most wanted to see in Seattle.  Some artists sculpted this troll holding a car under a real bridge!  It was fun to see.  Dave, being a troll mascot at one time in his college career, liked meeting another troll.  Ella and Delia thought it was hilarious to collect large rocks and then pull them out of the troll's nose after they pretended to pick it.

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Our last stop on this first downtown Seattle day was to Alki Beach.   Though the tide pools were roped off to protect the wildlife, we made friends with yet another dog and its owners.  We met A LOT of dogs on this trip.  I post this picture because I think Delia became buddies with every dog between CA and WA.  In Oregon we got so chummy with a dog owner that he actually pulled out his iPhone and showed us pictures of his family at "must-see" places in WA when we told him we were headed there next!

The time we spent doing the city thing was a nice compliment to all the time we spent hiking and seeing things of more natural beauty.  Again, this trip had a little bit of everything!