Return from Seattle: Amtrak

My "vacation" wasn't actually over when I left Seattle, as I had opted to return to Davis by train. The train left Seattle at 9:45am and the journey took just over 21 hours, passing through some spectacular scenery along the way. In the interests of a comfortable night's sleep I had reserved a "roomette" — a compartment with two seats which formed a single bed and an overhead bunk for a second bed. That entitled me to free meals and also to the use of the "parlour car" — a renovated carriage with bar, lounge area, eating area, "theatre" (a huge flat screen TV) and massive picture windows.

From Seattle the train headed past the Museum of Flight on its way to Tacoma and then along the Puget Sound (past the famous Tacoma Narrows, scene of the bridge disaster that we watched over and over again in Physics as an illustration of the power of resonance!). The scenery along here was beautiful.

We crossed into Oregon and arrived at Portland just after lunch time — a very pretty town where the train stopped for a shot while (much to the relief of the smokers on board who were able to get off and puff away!).

Later in the afternoon (after 5:00pm) we started to climb up through the Cascade Mountains, which provided more spectacular scenery. Unfortunately, I didn't take my camera to the dining car — the setting sun as we travelled through the snowy, forested top of the mountain range was awesome!

After a remarkably good night's sleep (I found that I woke up when the train stopped — fortunately, there were only two scheduled stops through the night), I woke up as we were approaching Sacramento. As the train was a little behind schedule there was time to enjoy the (free!) breakfast before the last leg of the journey to Davis, arriving at 7:30am, a little after the scheduled 6:50 arrival time.

All in all, a very fun way to end a great week away!

Day Three in Seattle: The Museum of Flight and Underground

My last day in Seattle started with a half-hour bus journey South of the city to visit the Museum of Flight. That is built on the site of the original Boeing factory (a converted barn!) and has some stunning planes on display and other exhibits. Some of the highlights are the last British Airways Concorde flown, a previous presidential jet (a 737, the first jet used as Air Force One), the first 747, the first 737, a Blackbird spy plane (the fastest aeroplane ever built), a moon rover, Mars explorer, space capsule, a recreation of the original Wright flyer and much, much more (clicking on any of the photos below will enlarge them).


Recreation of the Wright Flyer (note the Russian satellite hanging in the background too).


An elderly Air Force One!


The first 747 (note the large "1"!).


An Apollo Capsule.


The Blackbird spy plane (note the unmanned drone mounted on top too).


A recreation of the original Boeing factory in the barn.


The original factory from the outside.

I finally managed to drag myself away from there at about 3:00 in the afternoon and got back into Seattle just in time to take an "underground" tour. In the early part of the last century the city had been having a lot of trouble with its drains (mainly thanks to the recent introduction of indoor plumbing!). At that time a bad fire razed most of the town to the ground and offered an opportunity to fix the problems. Needless to say the townspeople and the city officials differed on just about every aspect of how this should be done, which led to the merchants rebuilding their shops at the (old) ground level while the city eventually rebuilt the roads one-storey higher! The result was that shoppers had to negotiate ladders to get down from the road level to the level of the pavement/sidewalk, and that incautiously driven carts sometimes ended up falling off the roads (as did incautiously inebriated citizens at night!). The eventual solution was to cover over the sidewalks, making the street level of the shops what was previously the first floor and introducing underground tunnels around each block. The underground tour went through a few of these tunnels, giving some of the history of the area with a great deal of tongue-in-cheek humour, (and not a little toilet humour given the cause of the problems!).

After a brief rest, I went out and got one last cache for my visit to Seattle. That was in the area of the Seattle Public Library, which was right across the road from my hotel (I could see the cache site from my hotel-room window!). The Library is interesting for its stunning architecture (I remember reading about it in Time magazine when it was opened a few years ago). That was followed by a meal of fresh fish and chips on the waterfront, watching the sun set and the seagulls stealing food from people eating on the dock outside the restaurant! A very memorable end to a great break.

Day Two in Seattle: Aquarium, Caching and Science Center

My second day in Seattle started with a trip to the aquarium (there's a photo of it from the harbour cruise in the previous posting below). That is an actual working/research aquarium, with some very interesting displays. In the entrance area, there is a huge tank with a depiction of the fish life from the Puget Sound (Seattle is on Elliot Bay, which opens up into Puget Sound). Just after I arrived they had an interactive "show" with two divers who were in the tank for cleaning and feeding and had headphones and microphones so that they could talk to the presenter on the dry side of the glass and the audience — very well done (you can make some of it out in the photo here, although there is a lot of reflection from the glass, actually more than 12 inches of acrylic). I had some lunch at the aquarium restaurant (but resisted the seafood options — it seems wrong to be eating their relatives in front of the tanks!).

From there I walked up into town through the Pike Place Market again to visit a small computer company who run the web-based systems on which geocaching works. They're bigger than I thought (35 employees and growing) and have a very nice set of offices in downtown Seattle (the servers are off-site, but nearby apparently). They do "official" tours on Friday afternoons, but very graciously allowed me to pop in briefly during normal office hours as I would be leaving on Friday morning. In the photo here you can see me standing below the company logo holding a HUGE geocoin and with the biggest geocache I have ever seen open in front of the desk!

From there I walked up to the Seattle Center again and visited the Pacific Science Center. That was what had triggered the visit to Seattle, as they were hosting a special exhibit on geocaching, GPS technology, etc. That was good fun (and a great way to introduce the uninitiated to geocaching). After completing the "maze" I wandered around the rest of the science centre and also saw an excellent IMAX movie on beavers (incredible creatures!).

Keeping in the geocaching spirit of the day I then did a few more caches (both the visit to the headquarters and the special exhibition also counted as caches), finding a couple in the vicinity of the Science Center (including one with the stunning fountain and view of the Space Needle that you see here).

After another ride back into the shopping area downtown, I walked through Pike Place (again!) to the waterfront and back to the hotel (with one more cache find en route!) as the sun was setting over the bay.

Sleepless in Seattle!

Well, I just got back from a brief trip to Seattle. That was a great experience as Seattle is a beautiful city.

I left on Tuesday morning and the trip got off to a slightly inauspicious start, as my flight was delayed by some minor technical issue and we took off well over an hour late. Alaska Airlines managed to make up quite a bit of the time, but I was still running late by the time I had found a shuttle bus service from the airport and checked into my hotel in downtown Seattle. The "deadline" was to try to catch the 2:45pm harbour cruise. That was part of the "CityPass" deal, which provided a booklet of tickets for six attractions at about half the normal total price. Several of the included attractions were things that I really wanted to do anyway and most of the others looked like fun, so it was a really good deal (I didn't use the zoo ticket in the end, but still saved a lot!).

The harbour cruise was very interesting and gave a good overview of the city. We saw some sea lions basking on a buoy, and also saw a massive gantry crane (used to offload the massive container ships) being transferred from the barge which had brought it from China onto the dock.

From the waterfront, I made my up through the famous Pike Place market (scene of the famous fish-throwing fish market) to the central shopping area and took the monorail to the Seattle Center. Both of those (monorail and Center) are relics from the 1962 World's fair held in Seattle.

The main feature of the Seattle Center is the famous Space Needle. Entrance to the Space Needle was included in the CityPass deal so I went up and admired the views from the top.



After getting some dinner in the area and wandering around the Center (lots of interesting gardens, architecture, fountains, etc.) I went up the Needle a second time to watch the sun setting and the city lights coming on. A very good end to my first day in Seattle.

The Jelly Belly Factory!

Anyone who knows me well will know that I have a sweet tooth (now there's an under- statement!). Well, on Tuesday Janet was taking Erin and a friend of hers through to the Jelly Belly factory near San Francisco. As they were driving right past Davis, I joined up with them for the excursion.

For those who haven't come across them before, Jelly Belly are the manufacturers of the Jelly Belly "gourmet" jelly beans. We took the (free) factory tour, which started off rather weakly with a lot of history, etc. before getting into the details of the manufacture of jelly beans (as is so often the case, a much more complex process than one initially appreciates).

One of the "gourmet" features of Jelly Belly beans is that they use a lot of natural fruit juices, etc. in the manufacturing process, and they also have some very interesting/different flavours (e.g. buttered popcorn, which really does taste like the real thing!). They really are very good jelly beans!

While the factor tour is free, it ends up in the inevitable shop, which is definitely not free (to be fair, we did get a small sample pack for free at the end of the tour). On display in the shop was one of the bicycles used by the Jelly Belly pro cycling team. After getting some lunch along the way, Janet and the girls dropped me off back in Davis after a fun day out.

Skiing, part 2

The Rocklin schools are Spring Break at the moment, so we (minus the boys who are on a church mission trip for the week) headed up to the mountains yesterday (Thursday). We went back to the Donner Ski Ranch, where we had spent New Years Day for my first attempt at skiing. As it is late in the season, there are some good mid-week deals going and I was able to get a full-day lift ticket and hire skis and boots for less than the lift ticket alone had cost back in January. The resort was also much less crowded than back in January.

After a short time of trying to get back into the basic techniques we headed up the ski lift. My first couple of runs were a little chaotic, but then I actually started to get the hang of it. By the early afternoon, I was managing to get several runs in a row with no falls and no need to use the "butt brakes" to stop! I still doubt that I'll ever be a good skier, but at least I managed to master the basics reasonably well.

Adding to the enjoyment yesterday was the fact that a light snow was falling all day, so we were skiing in stunningly beautiful conditions as the pictures show. Erin had a friend with her and we met up with some other friends of the Hobsons (dad and daughter), which meant that we formed a few groups of people of similar ability, which helped add to the fun.

Yay!!

The Farmers' Market Picnic in the Park is back! With the return of long evenings and good weather, the Wednesday evening Picnic in the Park has resumed (see some of my September 2008 postings for other observations and some photos). It actually started a couple of weeks ago, but today was the first day I was able to get there. We went onto Daylight Saving Time at the beginning of March (while I was in Chattanooga, actually), so the sun is setting at about 7:30pm now, and the weather is warming beautifully (maximum temps around the mid- to low-20's at the moment). Perfect for a lazy evening in the park enjoying some live music and good food.

The live music was a VERY blue blues band — music to slit your wrists to!

The range of fresh produce on offer at the market is a little different due to the seasons (no grapes yet), but I got some pistachio nuts and some delicious strawberries. I went Mexican for supper and had a super-burrito (a tortilla wrap stuffed with chicken, beans, rice, lettuce, sour cream, guacamole, etc., etc., etc.). Dessert was a delicious ice cream cone with handmade almond ice cream. Good thing I had to cycle home to burn off the calories!

Weekend in the mountains

We had a very good, relaxing time up in the Tahoe area (Truckee, to be precise — just North of Lake Tahoe) for the weekend. I took the train through to Rocklin on Friday morning then we headed up to the mountains after the youngsters were finished school on Friday, so we got there at about 7:00pm, unpacked and headed out to get some KFC for supper. The cabin (rather luxurious: three bedrooms, three bathrooms, a family room, huge open-plan kitchen and living area, and double garage) was nestled in among pine trees and surrounded by deep snow. Apparently it looks out onto a golf course (in summer — the photo below shows the view in winter!).

On Saturday Colin and the kids went off skiing for the day. Janet and I opted out and had a quiet, relaxing time at the cabin reading, before heading out for a good, brisk walk for a couple of hours. In the evening we played some board games then had lasagne for supper while we watched some videos.

On Sunday morning we had a big, cooked breakfast and then headed across the state line to Reno, Nevada. The main reason for that is that Jared has been accepted into UNR (the University of Nevada, Reno), among a number of other universities. As we were so close, we decided to drive through for a look at the campus, after which drove around the town a little to get a feel for it. It is a very attractive campus, although the rest of Reno is a bit of a dump (like a down-market version of Las Vegas in some ways).

We then headed back to the cabin, grabbed a quick snack for lunch and packed the cars (with six of us and a stack of ski gear, it was easiest to take two vehicles) before heading back to Rocklin. All in all, a very nice break in beautiful surroundings.