9 July 2012

Departed Everett WA for Seattle around 8:15 am.  Got to downtown Seattle around 9 and had a good address for RV parking within a reasonable walk to Pike’s market.  Here are the market pictures.  I bought some fresh produce from one of the stalls.  A homegrown tomato tastes so good.  Of course it reminded us a lot of Fisherman Wharf's market in SF.

 Roger is enjoying a huge sticky cinnamon roll.

We then walked down to Pioneer’s Square.  Not much to see early in the morning other than the folks just leaving the charity mission.  The park was just filling up with panhandlers staking their regular bench claim.

We finished downtown Seattle about 11 and headed to Mt. Rainer National Park.  We got lucky in that the morning fog had just burnt off enough and the clouds hadn’t grown yet around the 14,000+ peak. 

We drove the circumference of the park and then headed towards Yakima WA.  The Yakima river valley is another prime produce region.  Of course we bought some Rainer cherries.  The valley reminded us a lot of the Salinas valley, but with orchards.  It was still very dry looking with tall brown hills flanking both sides. 

We then headed towards the Columbia River gorge. 

 It was very windy, to the point that the waves were going counter to the river current.  We stopped at Multnomah Falls.  Roger had seen the falls in 1996, when he did the Rose Festival cruise on the USS Puller.  The falls hadn’t changed much, according to Roger’s memory.

We stopped outside of Portland.  Tomorrow I want to go to Bullseye glass, to see how the fuseable glass is made.  Then on northwest up the Columbia River to Austoria, where the Columbia meets the Pacific.  We’ve listened to several audiobooks, so we know the journey of Lewis and Clark quite well.