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Washington

Catching up, last Saturday

Here’s the deal, I’m writing this in arrears. We deliberately ratcheted down our screen time for a few days, but we saw a lot of lovely things and I wanted to share them here. The easiest way to do that, I figured, is in sequence. So, yes, this is published for Wednesday, June 23, the day we returned. But this particular post covers Saturday, June 19th.

Do you remember where you were on Saturday? I do. Here’s the proof.

As we previously discussed, we’re on a trip that’s a surprise to me. We flew yesterday, landing in Seattle and spending the night there. But it wasn’t our final destination. And we were on the plane to Seattle, our second plane of the trip, before I learned that much about where we were going.

We got a rental car this morning and visited the famous Pike Place Market.

That’s where The Yankee and I met her second cousin. She lives nearby, and took us out for lunch. It was a family introduction and a family reunion.

She is the author of eight books, meaning she’s got plenty of stories to share. She told us all about her childhood in Alaska, re-meeting my mother-in-law as adults, her travels abroad, her family, history and architecture. It was a pleasant lunch conversation with a lovely woman.

And we did some people watching on the balcony of the Copacabana, a Bolivian restaurant in the market. It’s been a family-owned joint for longer than I’ve been alive. And, on this day, the line to get in was short. In general, there were people milling about, but Seattle is apparently a city still emerging. The market, we were told, did not yet look like the crowded place it would be on a brilliant June Saturday.

At Copacabana, try their fritanga. It had fresh-tasting hominy — from a can, I’m sure, but still good. And the pork was simmered in an Andean cumin sauce. It was nice and mild, and I wish there was more of it. Quite tasty.

I haven’t had hominy in ages. Saw it on the menu and blocked out everything else. Hominy, I believe comes from Mesoamerica. I don’t know when it made it’s way down to Bolivia, but it’s nice that it did. It worked well here. Also, hominy is more nutritious than other corn products. (So grab some today!)

After we said our goodbyes we hoped in the rental car and drove a quick three hours outside of Seattle on a sunny summer day to Long Beach, Washington. You can find it down near the Oregon border.

Our rental condo was just 300 yards through some tall grass and low pines from the beach.

May I present to you, the beach:

I don’t guess I’ve seen the ocean since July of 2019. The seashore isn’t a spiritual destination for me like it is for some people, but even so, two years seems much too long.

Here are some panoramas of the beach. Click to embiggen.

I stood there on the beach making these changes to the photo, admiring a view I’d never see, when the actual beach was before me. And isn’t that a silly thing to do? Once more, click to embiggen.

In the next post, we’ll see a bit of Pacific coast history, and more Pacific Northwest beauty.

adventures / Friday / memories / video / Washington — Comments Off
18
Jun 21

Travel day

Saw the first headline about the upcoming fireworks shortage. (We’ve got two weeks to set off a series of stories and scavenger hunts.) But if you can’t find some, come on over. Most assuredly our neighbor bought them all.

We sat in the backyard last year and watched, which was much better than having to find the perfect spot and a parking spot, besides.

He had four false finales last year.

(Update: A week later, at the grocery store, I noted they’re selling sparklers on the end caps nearest cashiers. I think we’ll be fine.)

Anyway, we’re on the road. The Yankee has booked us a trip to I-know-not-where. It’s a long weekend, anniversary getaway. She booked it and said something about it being a surprise and we decided to play that out, just to see how it went. She told me what days to take off from work, what to pack and all of that.

I knew we were going to the airport, and the weather, milder than we’ve been experiencing, was the only clue I had. So I figured Pacific Northwest or Maine.

Turns out that Maine was a possibility, but we went another direction. We made it to the pay-to-park lot, to the airport, through security and down to the terminal and I still knew nothing. Out of habit I looked up at the sign at the gate and saw our connection was in Detroit.

I know it’s not Canada, because she didn’t tell me to get my passport. She could have just grabbed my passport. But also, there are still those border-crossing issues related to the coronavirus.

This is, by the way, our first flight since who knows when. Masks are still required in airports and airplanes, but don’t count the number of noses you see, it’s demoralizing. We were doing an over/under and realized, within 10 minutes or so, that we set the number far, far, faaaaar too low. At one point in Detroit I started wondering aloud, for the benefit of the ill-fitting mask wearers around me, how it was that people managed to put their pants on.

It’s really not that much different, I said, a bit of fabric worn over parts of the body that society has deemed, ya know, necessary.

No one answered me. No one ever answers those.

Aside from a few car-borne family visits this is also one of the very first times we’ve been anywhere that wasn’t at least somewhat necessary. And we have lived and worked in something of a bubble. Be it by institutional mandate or county orders or people’s concern, people we’ve encountered have generally taken great care to take great care. Today’s trips through the airports, then, have been an eye-opening “how the other half live” experience.

Anyway, in Detroit I carefully avoided the sign at the gate. No idea where we were headed next. We got on the plane and the flight attendant did the old welcome aboard speech — still the same spiel, even after that long layoff — and before my lovely bride could distract me (She went with a very loud “SHHHSHHHSHHSHHH!!!!”) I heard the guy say we were heading to Seattle.

Which, really, at some point you have to find out. And while I didn’t want to set my expectations for one place or another, the heat index in Indiana was 105 degrees today. We’ve gone the right direction, is what I’m saying.

Even still, that’s not the actual destination. We were to take a shuttle to an airport hotel tonight. It never showed up, so we hailed an Uber. Tomorrow we’ll rent a car and drive a few hours away. The mystery persists.