Category: Washington

Even after all the times I’ve been up to the Seattle area, I can’t get over how beautiful it is.

The first few photos were taken at Discovery Park:

The rest are from the Botanic Gardens, which I love:

On our last day in Washington, Crispy had to do some all-day school thing so Kathleen and I scoured the internet to find something cool to do. Luckily it’s super easy to find cool things to do up there. Our main activity of the day was checking out the Ballard Locks (officially named the Hiram M. Chittenden Locks). The Puget Sound is salt water and the lakes are freshwater, and the Locks give boats a way to go between them.

This boat is coming from a lake to the Sound and sits in a little holding area type of thing:

Here’s the “before:”

And the “after:”

The photos aren’t great, but you can see how the boat went from high to low as they let the water out. This way the level of the water can be controlled and boats can go from salt to fresh water and back again safely.

Then we checked out the fish ladder. Love this sign:

Some reading information for you (it’s actually very interesting):

This is where the fishies come out (we didn’t see any the day we were there):

This is the ladder that the salmon eventually swim up. The guys said that they had only gotten one that day, and we didn’t actually get to see any fish using the ladder. Still cool though:

The observation area below the ladder where you can see the salmon swimming against the current:

Fish eggs! Ew…

They look so determined don’t they:

We spent awhile trying to get photos of the fish jumping up out of the water. We saw quite a few but this was the best photo I got:

It really was entertaining for quite a long time. Much longer than most people would have spent there.

Kathleen:

Really liked this boat:

If you’re ever up in the Seattle area, I’d highly recommend checking out the Locks. It was educational, informative, and interesting. There were also some gardens around that we didn’t have time to really check out, but it looked like a great place to bring a picnic and spend a day or an afternoon.

There are some photos that are hard to categorize. They mainly fall into the “hanging out” category and may or may not have been taken at the same time as others posted. So I decided to make them a group.

This is the view of the sunset from my sister Lera’s balcony in Kirkland one night:

And here’s AJ throwing Lera around:

Crispy’s mean cat, Emma (can’t  you just see the I-want-to-kill-you Look in her eyes?):

Crispy made this really good Thai chicken pizza for dinner one night. YUM:

We were waiting for Crispy to finish a phone call so I took pictures of Kathleen:

Mmmm martini bar….

From one of those super fancy cupcake stores:

There are apparently only 2 no-no’s at this swimming area, and the second one is almost funny but probably isn’t:

Baby ducks!

I almost made the news that night, because a couple of kids were throwing rocks at the baby ducks and I almost turned and threw rocks at the kids. WHAT is wrong with parents????

But I restrained myself.

We thought it would be a lot of fun to plan a meal and buy most of the ingredients at Pike Place the morning of making it. I love going to Pike Place. I’m all about fresh produce and flowers and they are all in abundance. When we live in Seattle there will be no reason for Darek to not buy me flowers on a regular basis, because they are so affordable up there. Ha!

Buying our pasta:

I think it was something like lemon-basil or something:

This is where they throw the fish (featured on tv and such):

And this is what we made; the best fish I have ever had:

The finished product…it was…just…so good…

Nom nom nom.

After lunch we spent some time walking around the area around the space needle. We came across a “quote/poetry garden” kind of thing and there were a few that I really liked.

The one above is kind of hard to read. It says:

When you walk past my window
Bless me.
For the light is still on.

The light is on —
In this dark night
Like a speck of fisherman’s lantern.
You may suppose that my little cabin
Is a small boat tossing in the storm
Yet I’m not sinking
For the light is still on.

–Shu Ting

This fountain is really cool. Music is playing and the water shoots way up at periodic intervals:

I really like riding the monorail:

Horsie with ear mittens!

A view of Seattle from Queen Anne Hill:

I really like Seattle. A lot.