Seattle

One of the things we had been wanting to do was take a trip to Seattle before we moved. We planned to go sometime this summer, but when Chris accepted the job in Utah, we didn't think we would get to. We ended up making a spur of the moment decision to go. Chris accepted the job on Thursday, and we left Saturday afternoon. I got done with work early so we packed our stuff in the car and went. We got there Saturday afternoon/evening and did some shopping, we rode the monorail from the mall to the Space Needle and back. We decided not to go up in the Space Needle because of the cost, so instead we went to the Skyview Observatory, which was way cheaper, and is much higher than the Space Needle. The only thing is that it's in an office building, so you ride the elevator up and don't get to see outside until you are at the top. We ate at a pizza place that night and then went to our hotel.

We found a church to go to the next day. It is so nice that we can be anywhere and there is an LDS church to go to and we can take the sacrament and have the same Sunday School lesson we would have had at home. While we were there we met a guy who gave us two free tickets to the Museum of Flight and a buy one get one free ticket to the zoo. We had been debating about what to go do on Monday and we didn't want to pay for everything, so it was really nice that we got to do both! We didn't have time to go to the Aquarium.

Sunday afternoon we walked around Pike's Place Market and saw some fun stuff. We walked down the pier by the ocean. It was raining all day but we survived. After that we went to the Ballard Locks.
The Locks are basically a "boat elevator" where boats come in to pass between salt water and fresh water. You can go for free and watch as the boats come in, and on one side the water is very low and they raise or lower the water level till it is level with the other side, and then they open the gates and let the boats go through. It was kind of cool. Because we were there in the evening the Visitor's Center was closed but it was still pretty cool. At the same place is the fish ladder, which was built to help the fish get from salt water to fresh water, and up to the higher water level. You can go down below the water and watch the fish as they pass through, but we didn't really see any because not a lot of fish come in May/June.

It was fun watching as they threw the fish at the fish market.

                                    

Monday we went to the zoo first. It was a pretty big zoo and we had fun. Our favorites were probably the penguins and the gorillas. I had never been to a zoo where I saw so many gorillas actually doing stuff. There were 4 and they were so cute. It is so funny how they can bite off the end of some broccoli or cucumber and chomp on it. They way they use their hands is so humanlike. The penguins were just too cute. Some little kids were putting their hands on the glass and running back and forth, and a penguin would follow them back and forth by swimming really fast. We also watched them waddle around while they got fed. We enjoyed the bears as well because two bears came up close and one leaned up against a tree to scratch his back, and the other jumped into the water and swam around and came right up to the glass. There were tons of people though so it was hard to see everything and get a good picture.

After the zoo we went to the Museum of Flight. It was actually much cooler than I thought it would be. There were SO MANY planes there, new and old, big and small. We even got to go inside the first Air Force One that President Reagan used. We also saw a lot of space things. It was really cool.

During this trip I also got 9 more pennies (I know, I am kind of addicted). Now I have 43 smashed pennies and 2 smashed quarters, from lots of different places. :)

After the museum we headed home. We were glad we got to go to Seattle before we moved!