Seattle, Washington:

We found our taxi and got to our hotel. We had never spent any time in Seattle before, so we looked forward to walking around a bit. Two things that we did notice right away. There are many city-owned busses running through the town... if you need a bus, stand on just about any street intersection and several will come by. The other thing is that there is a Starbucks Coffee stand on just about as many corners. It appears that their corporate office is located in the area.

There is a well-known shopping location down along the wharf, which draws a lot of visitors, but as one would expect that is not a location for bargain shopping. Not too far from our hotel was this street that had a glassed enclosure covering the entire street. Nice place to shop when the snow is falling I bet.

A dozen floors up from the street and they plant a tree on their balcony. I have seen the same thing in Vancouver, B.C.

The well-known Space Needle stands just a little over 600 feet tall, and is actually on the ground, behind this building. The Needle, the building, the tall light structures on the left, and the water feature in the foreground are all part of the 1962 World's Fair held in Seattle. The Needle was built privately, with private funds, on a private piece of property located in the corner of the fairgrounds. There are two restaurants in the top that rotate every 47 minutes by the work of a 1.5 horsepower electric motor. Elevators take visitors up to the restaurants and the observation deck, and carried almost 20,000 people a day during the fair. The tower was built in one year and the last elevator car was hung the day before the fair opened.

The foundation is a block of concrete thirty feet deep and 120 feet wide that weighs the same as the entire tower that is above the ground level. It took 467 concrete mixer trucks dumping in one day to fill the hole. That bolt Rosalee is holding, along with 71 others, is thirty feet long and holds the steel tower in place. It is designed to withstand a 9.1 earthquake and 200 mph winds.

We joined a small group and rode up to Everett, Washington to tour the Boeing Everett Factory. I have no images of the facility, because as you might imagine, security is a very tight issue around there. The building is said to be the largest building under a single roof, and the largest building in the world by volume. The ceiling is nine stories above the floor and the floor is 98.3 acres of area. That is 4.3 million square feet and would hold 911 regulation basketball courts. It has four large sliding doors on the south wall to allow planes to exit the assembly area and each of them are almost the size of a U.S. football field. Without extensive air-movement equipment the building will create its own weather, including clouds.

There are one million lights hanging and 1,300 bicycles on the floor for transportation. They have their own security and fire departments, a fully staffed medical clinic, a childcare center, four telephone prefixes, a water treatment plant, their own electrical substation, and 19 cafeterias that serve 17,000 meals daily.

The building is basically divided into four separate assembly lines, one each for the 747, the 767, the 777 (triple seven they call it), and the fourth bay was completely cleaned out getting ready to tool up to build the new 787. The 777 section brought in fuselages from somewhere else to be outfitted. There were about five of them moving down one side of the area. At the far end they turned to come back up the other side, and that was where they gained their wings. Five more planes were in this second row, with two huge, multi-million dollar engines waiting at the end of the line to be installed. The guide indicated that they do not warehouse engines... they come in from their assembly plant on an as-needed basis.

When the engines are installed the planes are towed out of the building, across a large overpass over the freeway to the paint shop. It takes several days to paint one. Then they are checked out, fueled up, checked again, test flown by a Boeing test pilot and crew, test flown a second time with the customer's test pilot and crew, and then turned over to the customer. They do not deliver.

The guide shared that a flight crew from the middle east came to pick up their new plane and without reading all of the instructions, commenced to "warm up the engines" and when they throttled up the engines the computer understood that to mean they were taking off so it released the wheel brakes and... that plane never flew again. Fortunately the crew were unharmed.

Car Rental and Travel:

As we left Seattle after several days of exploring we rented a car to be used to drive home. But first we headed across the state to Valley, Washington, a few miles north of Spokane. We rented a hotel in Spokane and then drove up to Valley to visit Ken's cousin Karen Odle and her mom Leona, Ken's mom's sister. Karen's dad, Ray was in a care facility in another nearby town and was suffering from Alzheimer's and was not recognizing Karen or Leona so we did not want to confuse him more by showing up. We spent our time with those with whom we could visit. Karen built a lovely home for her mom and dad there on her small ranch. Karen always enjoyed animals, but grew up in the Los Angeles area, where she never had room for animals. When her dad was getting where he could no longer get out and about, he really enjoyed seeing Karen's animals. She also is certified to care for abandoned and abused 'wild' animals, and she has a fawn she named "Joey" that was orphaned. Joey would come into the house if allowed, and Ray enjoyed that. Alzheimer's can often take you back to the days when you are again a child, and I am sure that thoroughly delighted Ray.

Karen has a small manufacturing facility where she makes things for larger companies, including Boeing across the state, and she has several employees working with her. She was able to get some time away from that and the four of us (Joey stayed home) took a drive over into Idaho. We searched out and found property my brother Cody's younger son and family purchased for future use. Andy and Cherryl and their two young'uns have built a cute little cabin and he plans on putting up a nice shop in the near future.

Leaving Karen and Leona's homes, after an enjoyable couple of days, we drove south to the Pasco - Kennewick WA. area to visit Tom and Vicki Hughes, two students of Ken's that met in his classes and married. Tom was/is very talented and did a lot of good work in the automotive program and Vicki was in the Girl's Automotive class, as well as served as Ken's teacher's assistant for a couple of years. They were both firefighters in the area, and Tom is now Captain of a firehouse in Kennewick.

Vicki picked us up at our hotel and we went over to a supermarket where Tom and 'the boys' were shopping for groceries to take back to "the house" ... firehouse. Anywhere they might be their engine (fire truck) is with them, so when we went back to 'the house' Tom asked if I wanted to ride 'shotgun' in the front of the engine. I jumped on that chance. It was a large three-axle rig and brought back some fond memories of my early days in the trucking industry. We had lunch with the gang and Rosalee and I had picked up some cakes and ice cream at the store for dessert.

That afternoon Vicki took us out on a drive and Tom went with us on a drive the next day. We saw  a lot of interesting things that you could certainly miss if you did not know about them. We visited a beautiful park where an interesting gazebo was located. It had a very nice old fashioned style that was very pleasing.

Nearby was a small bird sanctuary with some beautiful birds. Some species I recognized but others were new to me.

I don't know the species of the one in the left corner, but the one above seems to be a variety of Wood Duck, not commonly found on the western side of the U.S. The bird to the left is an old friend. These grew up around Gridley where I grew up. They are the Ring-Necked Pheasant. Below is what appears to be a gorgeous Peacock in full display.

Traveling further east we passed a lot of openly farmed land, where asparagus, alfalfa hay, and world-famous Walla Walla Onions are grown. What we did not expect to see was a beautiful miniature of The Grand Canyon in the state of Washington. At the head of the canyon (and most likely the builder of the canyon) we found the Palouse Falls, a state park that drains into the Snake River and then into the Columbia River. The water falls just a foot short of 900 feet. Very impressive.

After leaving Tom and Vicki's home we drove down through Oregon, staying one night in Grant's Pass, Oregon. All in all it was a beautiful and enjoyable trip. We covered many miles, and would gladly repeat it anytime.

Through The Canal

After The Canal

AFTER THE CRUISE