American Adventure

Washington (Seattle)

Thank you to my good friend Andrew Deutscher for getting a great place to stay in Seattle. I must also thank his friends for donating their house to us even though they weren't even home.

A very special thank you goes out to my friends Johnny and Vickie Parrott from Marysville for taking such good care of me. Thank you so much for everything. You people are the best. I miss you already and it was so hard to say goodbye.

Also, thank you to my friends, Erik Briggs and Kari Lovit from Hooters in Seattle, WA.

Thanks also to Dave Pearcy from Chander's Cove

Starting on September 06, 2002, 9:25:50 AM

After getting off of the ferry in Bellingham my plans were to head directly to Kinko's there and update my web site and email. However, my new friends Andrew, Alissa, and Catherine were all heading down to Seattle, and I wasn't ready to say goodbye quite yet, so I decided to tag along with them instead.

We didn't take too long getting to Seattle, so it was a little bit of a challenge to get this shot of Andrew at about 90 miles per hour. I kind of took him by surprise as he looked over and saw a camera pointed at him. Look real close, he's giving me the thumb's-up.

Seattle was so very nice with the sun shining. Andrew made a phone call to a friend to ask if there was any inexpensive motels around the area. They told him that they were headed out of town and we could all stay at their house while they were gone. We headed over to their house, dropped off our stuff, and all took Alissa's car down to the Market, not far from downtown. That place was pretty neat, with quite an awesome display of the amazing produce and seafood that comes out of the Pacific Northwest.

The next day we went over to University Village and had lunch at a wonderful Vegan restaurant. With an all you can eat buffet and wonderful food, I stuffed myself way too much. We did a little exploring and later I headed to my friend Johnny's house up in Marysville.

I spent the night and had a wonderful visit with Johnny and his family. The next morning, Sunday, I got up and headed to Whidbey Island to spend the day with another friend, Amy, that I had previously met on the ferry from Alaska as well. It had begun to rain so Johnny gave me the keys to his Ford Ranger so I wouldn't have to ride in the rain. What a great friend.
I took a ferry across to the island. On the short ferry ride I looked over and saw the other ferry heading from the island, the other direction. As I took the picture I wondered if there might have been some idiot over there, taking a picture of me.

Whidbey Island is located in the Puget Sound, just north of Seattle. From the island I could look across to the Olympic Peninsula and thought it interesting that I might be over there in a few days.

Amy took me to the Fort Casey State Park. With a neat old lighthouse there and all the remains from the original fort, the area was an interesting place to explore. Fort Casey was built, along with Fort Flagler and Fort Worden, to defend the Puget Sound from invaders. The seven "disappearing guns", like the one pictured here, were constructed with some amazing hardware, to drop down, out of sight, so they couldn't be seen. This fort had long since been abandoned and was no longer needed when they developed airplanes and ships with longer range guns.

A couple of crows provide for a neat contrast in this picture of a small grassy meadow.

Looking out into the Puget Sound I saw this huge cruise ship. You can then look at it in the picture to the right and see the difference without using the 8X zoom feature of the camera. It definitely makes a big difference.

I ventured back to Seattle the next day, Monday, to see if I could get on TV or in the local paper. I got these shots from a bridge on the freeway. I took them as fast as I could before a police officer came by to give me a ticket.

I stopped in front of the Space Needle and grabbed a few shots before looking for the local TV stations.

I saw this car in a parking lot not far from the channel 5 studio. If you can't quite tell what that is, its a bunch of baby dolls stuck to the hood of the car, made to look like they were imbedded or floating in the hood. (Weird)

I stopped at the channel 5 (NBC) station and couldn't even get in the door. They had a phone on the outside of the door that I used to talk to a few fairly rude people. As I have had the experience before, they gave me the brush off and asked if there was a number that I could be reached at. Now I do have a cell phone but usually have it off to save the battery and the fact that I'm on a motorcycle, I can't hear it anyway. So there's really no point in giving them a number since I'll be moving on anyway.

I made a phone call to the other local station, channel 4. They were a little more friendly but didn't have any reporters available because they were all getting ready for all the "one year after" 9-11 stuff.

I got a shot of downtown from the south of town here and then headed to get lunch and go back to Marysville.