Olympia, Washington - June 21st to 24th

We’d been told by a friend of ours in Australia that we MUST go and stay with Derek & Sara in Olympia, south of Seattle – so we’re very glad we took that recommendation! (Thanks Lachlan!)

After staying up near Seattle for another night, we had a very slow day just struggling to get out of bed, and buying a few more things at Walmart for the van, and then sat in the scary city traffic for quite a while on our way south – should have probably thought about what day and time it was (Friday afternoon), and maybe left a bit earlier! Up to this point at least, we discovered that America is truly the land of highways – massive multi-lane (and sometimes multi-level) roads with up to 7 lanes in each direction! So although the photo below was probably taken somewhere else in Washington State, we definitely spent our fair share of time (at least!) in the slow direction!

When we arrived (much later than expected!) at Derek & Sara’s place in Olympia, we headed out to dinner at a nearby restaurant via cruise bike – awesome! They have an awesome collection of stretched out cruiser bikes, including one tandem bike, and also an electric bike each (would be SO good for riding to and from work, ad everywhere else like these two do!), as well as mountain bikes – not to mention lots of long boards for skating!

So on the way back from dinner, after catching a close of view of a massive bald eagle taking off (!!) we stopped at a soon to be subdivision and tried out the long boards, it was lots of fun! (I even managed to go along myself for a bit, which is a pretty big achievement considering my level of coordination! Lawrie on the other hand was fantastic already…)

Bonzai Boarding - SO much fun!!

The next morning we got up early (ish) to enjoy the serenity of canoeing on the nearby lake – although people live all around the lake, motorboats aren’t really used, and there was a beautiful mist all over the lake when we started out – very peaceful!

  

Then after a delicious breakfast cooked by Sara (thanks again!!) we headed off to Capitol Hill to do some mountain biking with Derek & Sara – had a great time on one of the single trail tracks there, and even saw Mt Rainier and Mt St Helens in the distance from the top!

We had a little more of a lazy afternoon after that, and after dinner we had a game of rounders with the neighbourhood kids – they were thinking of waiting until the next day for this, but there was a group of kids waiting outside! So we enjoyed that for an hour or two, then rode the cruiser bikes to Baskin Robbins (with a few of the kids and a couple of the parents) to enjoy an ice cream!

Water break...

The next day after the morning meeting at the Olympia Convention grounds, we headed to nearby State Park to wander among the pines and near another lake, then headed to the Farmers Markets in town to enjoy some delicious greek Gyros for lunch. We also got some delicious cupcakes and checked out a few other parks around Olympia, although I’m not too sure of their names – but they were SO green and beautiful, and just different to at home!! The last one we went to was the Tumwater Falls park area, where there’s a salmon ladder too, which was quite cool, although no salmon to be seen there or in the nearby hatchery at this time of year.

We amused Derek & Sara with some classic Aussie country songs too, relaxed in their hammock inside, and all in all had a fantastic weekend with some new friends, who we hope to catch up with again not too far down the track!

Seattle City - June 20th

After our time at the Boeing Factory, we had a pretty chilled out sleepy day and after unsuccessfully trying to find a nearby RV (caravan) park or campground near Seattle to stay the night at, we were invited to stay with some friends when we rang to find a nearby meeting – so we had a lovely dinner and meeting with them in Issaquah near Seattle, and it was fantastic to meet some of the friends! Kristin & Marcus, their 3 month old son Peyton, Kristin’s dad Dave and cousin Connor from Boston.

Police Car in the USA - Marcus is a State Trooper

Their beautiful house that we stayed in

Connor, Zoe, Marcus, Peyton, Kristin, Dave

We heard that Seattle has 2 seasons – winter and August. However, it’s not August yet… It’s also really well known for its rainy weather, with shirts in the markets showing the 4 seasons of the year as al the same – rain. It rained pretty much all day as we walked around the city, but a lot lighter rain than home, so we joined the rest of the city rugged up in our rain jackets and enjoyed the day!

The new (ish) Ferris Wheel on the Seattle waterfront

Thought this umbrella artwork on the street was rather fitting!

We went to the Pike Place Markets, which are on every day of the year and were crowded with people – they had some really cool stalls with all sorts of trinkets and also a lot of different food stalls which looked fantastic! It was probably a good thing we didn’t have much cash…

We stopped for quite a while at the famous Pike Place Fish Market, waiting until someone wanted to buy a fish – they are famous for their great attitude and smiles in a normally not so exciting job, so much that people crowd around to watch them! They are also well known for throwing the fish to each other when someone wants to buy one, and also getting someone from the crowd to try and catch the fish, with varying results! The blond girl below managed to catch the fish thrown to her, and got some pretty big cheers! Then the guy throwing it did a victory dance, and all the staff cheered again!

Crowds at the Pike Place Market

Some really cool candles at the Markets

The famous Pike Place Fish Market

 We also saw a less well known tourist attraction – the gum wall. Pretty disgusting, but it looked cool if you didn’t think too much about what it actually was!

After the gum wall we caught the monorail to the Space Needle (similar to Centre Point Tower) for views over the city – although it was a rather overcast day, so there wasn’t too much in sight! Certainly no Mt Rainier in sight behind the city, unlike most of the photos we’d seen! But I’m pretty sure we saw Seattle the way it’s typically seen!

Next to the Space Needle there’s the Chahuli Glass and Garden, where there are amazing glass blown sculptures made into the shape of different plants and set up as a garden – we didn’t pay to go in, but we had a look as best we could from the outside, and that was pretty cool!

Boeing Factory, Mukilteo - June 18th

When we headed south from Vancouver, we were aiming for a 3pm ‘Future of Flight’ tour at the Boeing Factory in Mukilteo, near Everett – but we managed to run a little late with the heavy traffic and the border crossing, so had to reschedule… Had our first taste of America’s gigantic RVs (massive doesn’t even start to describe!), and felt a little small in our normal sized van! Had a great first night’s sleep in the van, then headed off to the Boeing Factory tour.

We’d heard that this was fantastic, and it sure was! We learnt so many things (many of which I have since forgotten, in all of 2 days…) and it was really cool to see the massive planes (767, 747 and the new 787) on the production line! We weren’t allowed to take any cameras or phones on the tour with us, when we were actually in the factory, but we could while in the gallery, where there are various bits of planes from now and back in the day.

Crossing the border into the USA

Looking out at the Boeing Factory

Some of the things I found pretty interesting:

• The Boeing factory at Everett is the biggest building in the world by volume – it’s around 98 hectares in area, which is over 75 American football fields, and 911 basketball courts.
• The 6 doors on the building are each 96m long by 24m high, to allow the planes to get through them for flight testing and painting (seriously massive!)
• There are over 6 million parts that make up a 747-8 (the latest 747 model)
• It takes around 4 months to build a 747-8 plane
• The top of the tail on a 747-8 is 6 stories high
• To buy a 747-8, WITHOUT any seats or other fitout, or even any engines, it would set you back $350 million (I assume $USD) – for a 737, the 3 and 3 seat configuration single aisle smaller Boeing planes, at would cost around $90 million.
• The 787 Dreamliner plane now in production and in use by a few airlines around the world (we saw the first in production for Qantas/Jetstar) has engines that are 60% quieter than the previous model (can’t remember if this was replacing the 767 or the 737)
• The 787 is made of a composite material which is stronger than steel but lighter than aluminium, and therefore it can fly further using less fuel, allowing for longer flights without stopovers (opening up new flight paths around the world)
• Because of the strength of the material that the plane is made from, more humidity is allowed in the cabin when flying, so less drying out when on long flights
• The windows are 65% bigger than on other Boeing planes (which is a LOT bigger – they had a demo size window, and it’d sure be great to have a window seat!!)
• They built a special plane to transport the components of the 787 Dreamliner – this is called the DreamLifter, and the factory in Everett has 4 of these – a supersized 747 which is really tall and round to be able to fit the whole fuselage of the 787 inside it!

 

747-8 Cargo plane before being painted - at the wall where they test the engines, so the cars on the freeway behind and in the carpark aren't blown away.

The paint hangars

An engine as used in the 787 Dreamliner - Rolls Royce

How big the tail fin of a 747 is - 33 feet tall

Fuselage of a 787 Dreamliner

Cockpit of an older plane - so many controls it's sort of scary!

And I’m sure there were many other things as well, but hopefully you’re still awake reading this!