Tuesday, August 4, 2009

I know – I have been lazy about getting this written the past 3 days. We have been so busy and out of the truck, but I will backtrack to last Friday to catch everyone up. At my last posting, we were sitting in the middle of a bean field trying to find someone to unload us! Mark called every number we could find, for every company that was associated with the load, until he had everyone “stirred up”. By 11:00 that morning, after 3 hours, he had 3 people show up and they sent a "welder" from another job to unload us. Of course, we didn’t care who they sent by that point! Needless to say, we couldn’t get a load out. By the time we finally left there, it was already noon. We were going to be stuck in a small town for the whole weekend so we decided to head to Seattle. We stopped for the night about 80 miles out and drove on in to Tacoma on Saturday morning.

Tacoma is about 25 miles from downtown Seattle, but there aren’t any truck stops around Seattle. However, we didn’t let this detour us! We got on the internet and checked out the buses in the area. Someone told us there was a bus stop within few hundred feet of the truck stop, so off we went. We decided to make a trial run at it on Saturday afternoon, but ended up making it all the way to downtown Seattle. Sunday morning we got up and went to Seattle again with the intention of doing all of the touristy things!!! We went to the waterfront, Pike’s Market, (where all of the produce, flowers and fish are brought in), the Space Needle, a cruise around the harbor, (Elliott Bay and Puget Sound), Seattle Aquarium, and the Science Fiction Museum/Hall of Fame. This is probably not somewhere we would have gone, but it was included in a ticket package that we bought. Jeremy would have loved it!!! It had all of the things used in the Science Fiction movies (Star Wars, ET, and so many others that I can’t even remember), TV shows like Star Trek and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and old first edition Sc. Fiction books. Of course, we were intrigued by the Lost in Space robot from the 60’s – could be an age thing!! Ha! A Jim Henson exhibition was there from the Smithsonian so got to see his original drawings for the Muppets and the actual characters from Sesame Street that were used in the shows. It was pretty neat! I have to regress for a minute though – the flowers at the market were something to see!! They were dirt-cheap and literally thousands of every variety/species. Rosie would have loved it! I would have loved to buy some, but I am not sure what I would have done with them in a truck. Ha!!

Saturday night we ate at The Crab Pot, which I had seen on "Diners, Drive-ins and Dives". It is where they put paper on your table and bring out a huge steel pot of seafood, potatoes and corn and dump it on your table. They give you wooden mallets, and boards to crack open the crab and other things. I love crab and shrimp, but do not care for mussels or oysters though. Mark doesn’t eat any seafood, except shrimp so we didn’t order it, but the halibut, clam strips, prawns and scallops that I ate were to die for ---- unbelievably fresh seafood. It was great and if I could have talked Mark into it, I would have probably eaten it again. I did have some crab dip that was fantastic on Sunday though. I was determined to get in a little more seafood before we left!!! Speaking of seafood -- the salmon are running and check out one of the fishermen with his catch. He held it up as our boat passed by Saturday. I am including a picture. Also, another really interesting thing to see on the boat was the the ice breaker boats that were docked there. They can break through ice over 6 ft. deep!! The docks where they were loading out freight was interesting to see too. They were working so we actually saw some of the great cranes loading the freighters.
Seattle was wonderful and I am glad that we got to spend weekend there. Well, actually, it turned into a little longer, but we didn’t go back to the city yesterday. We spent the entire morning online trying to find a load out of Washington!! There wasn’t anything so we took a bus to the mall for dinner and a movie last night. As we walked around last evening, we saw the most breathtaking views of Mt. Ranier -- absolutely stunning!!!

Today we got up looking for a load and again there wasn’t anything going out, so we are heading out towards Spokane. We have to be in by the weekend so we hope to find something this afternoon or in the morning along the way. I have to go to a workshop next Monday morning so my adventure is coming to an end. I am not looking forward to it after having such a wonderful summer.

Until tomorrow – oh, and before I forget – Happy Birthday to my #1 brother --- David!!! Live it up --- only one more year before the BIG one!!!

Cindy Pictures from top to bottom -- (1) sunset over Puget Sound (2) Seattle skyline from the water (3) flowers at the market (4) The Crab Pot Restaurant (5) salmon fisherman (6) ice breaker boat (6) Space Needle from the ground lit up in the evening