Category: Washington

November 4th – November 17th, 2007

Getting to know Seattle

Sleepless in Seattle pretty much sums up our last two weeks in Seattle. Talk about Shrek and Donkey on a whirlwind big city adventure – that was us! During the days, we continued hiking everywhere, from short jaunts up the hill a few blocks to the Victrola Coffee Shop for some business sessions, to the Broadway Grille for brunch, to the Seattle Art Museum (known as SAM in these regions) for an extensive tour, to the waterfront where we saw Pike Place market again and browsed the shops along the waterfront.

We made several trips to REI where we got a chance to scope out some of the equipment we have looked at online. It was a wonderful opportunity to see in person how things work, and what we definitely want to add to our list – like the MSR Dragonfly stove, bear canisters, and the GCI Outdoor Everywhere chairs. We also got a chance to return our sleeping pads – both of which had faulty air valves – and we scored some Chaco sandals for when we hit warmer weather. I also scored on some North Face Espial pants on sale – they are so comfortable that I take them off long enough to wash and then I wear them again!
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Father Mark, AB, Pat and assorted friends

It’s dark outside, we’ve just finished a bowl of soup and toast for dinner, and we’re settling in for more work after dinner. We’ve had an awesome day, in fact, an awesome week! We just love being here in Seattle. There’s never a dull moment, and there’s always something or someone to see. Pat’s got a long, long time friend named Father Mark, who very often comes out to Seattle from New Jersey for Halloween. I first met him last year after our 2006 cycling adventure, and we were lucky enough to overlap with him again this year. FM, as he’s known to friends, is great fun.

He took us to dinner at Julia’s in Capitol Hill on Friday night, where we met Alex Jackson and Rod, followed up by a visit to Purr, a happening nightclub, where AB joined us, and where we met Jay Sandel. Check out the photos in the photo gallery. Then we had another treat on Sunday – we got to have dinner with Pat, Carlos, and FM in Chinatown. The food was great and the leftovers were still great! We laughed our way through both nights. Father Mark gets our Hero of the Day for both of those wonderful evenings!
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We made it! We’re here in Seattle and we are starting the next major leg of our trip. At this point we aren’t quite sure what that will look like, as we are now nearly into winter, and the temperatures at night are dropping down into the 30’s. Luckily, we have a few days to think over what our strategy will be – we are staying with longtime friend Pat Celi and his roommate AB live right on Capitol Hill in downtown Seattle. We’ve arrived just in time for all the Halloween festivities, and we are having an incredible amount of fun with the guys, going to second hand stores and costume stores looking for the perfect costumes for them. Chelsea’s got a great start on hers – we’ll post photos on Halloween.
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