I started off my journey through the Great American West in Seattle, Washington.  Because I am super cool and live on the edge when I travel, I went with my Mom.  It is one of her favorite cities after all so she was the perfect companion to tour this cool corner of America.  Here is a breakdown of the spots we hit!

Day 1

We arrived in Seattle pretty late and headed to Green Lake, a neighborhood in Northeast Seattle.  We had some nice pizza at a restaurant right by the park.  The area was gorgeous and had plenty of restaurants and bars within walking distance.  We checked out a market in the area as well to grab breakfast food.

Day 2

Well this day started out very non blog worthy – Mom and I worked most of the day because well… that’s just how we operate.  We finally took a break late that afternoon to check out Pike’s Place, the iconic market in downtown Seattle.  First we checked out The Soundview Cafe, a fabulous restaurant overlooking the Puget Sound.  I had a delicious BBQ salmon sandwich and my mom had some fabulous prawns.  We headed to the farmer’s market at Pike’s Place where we had some AMAZING smoked salmon that we were able to buy to take back home.  If you go to Pike’s Place, please get that salmon!!  We ended up walking through the market which was full of huge, fresh fruit and interesting dried fruits.  Due to my severe obsession with chocolate-fruit combinations, Mom and I picked up some chocolate covered cherries which were divine!

After Pike Place, we headed to Kerry Park, an awesome spot for viewing the Seattle skyline.  It is a small overlook but has some great views.  Kerry Park is located in the Lower Queen Anne neighborhood which has some gorgeous houses where Mom and I pretended we lived for the day.  The neighborhood had a nice garden in it that mesmerized us.  Fish, chocolate, cherries, skylines, and gardens – a great day!

Day 3

Mom and I got up and tried to take a drive out to Olympic Park until we realized that it was FOUR hour drive away.  After that slight deterrence, we decided to head to Mount Rainier, which took us oh…four and a half hours to get to our trail.  But that was our fault.  We decided to take the scenic route and jump out for pictures every five minutes since it was so beautiful!  The drive really should have been only two hours.  Along the way we stopped by the lake above.

Thanks to some the world of internet reviews, we decided to take the Grove of Patriarchs Trail in the Ohanapecosh area of the park.  The trail was only about a mile and a half and had some of the largest red cedar trees in the state.  It also had a creek running through the trail that a cable bridge where only one person could pass at a time.  Adventure!  Definitely a great trail that was easy to walk with plenty of sights along the way.  Some trees had to be more than 30 feet tall and just as wide.  We tried to act cool – failed miserably.

After our indulgence in nature we headed to a burger joint in downtown Seattle and grabbed some ice cream.  Delicious of course because, well… all food in Seattle is delicious.

Day 4

We started off the day by going down under!  Well down under Seattle.  There’s an entire tour of underground Seattle.  I won’t spoil the tour since I don’t work for the company who runs it but basically the whole city was built up to make the streets more level and reduce the hill grade.  There are still viable walkways under the current streets where we walked through and heard about the extremely amusing history of Seattle.  Great tour!

After checking out the underground city, we headed to Bainbridge Island.  We took the ferry which was a beautiful 40-minute ride across the Puget Sound.  We ate at Harbour on the Marina – great restaurant.  We had mussels and the Salmon Asian Bowl, all of it absolutely delicious.  We tried to take the Water View Trail that follows the island to get back to the ferry but we got tragically lost.  After much trial and error, we made it back to the ferry and headed to Green Lake for some Chinese food.

Day 5

On our final full day in Seattle, we had to visit the most important site in the city: the Space Needle!  Of course this was the only day where it rained and was under 70 degrees.  Go up a few hundred feet in the air and it feels like small pieces of ice are trying to make you less than great.  But we were not defeated!  We made it to the top and got some fantastic views of the city.  Definitely worth the harrowing weather we battled to make it up there.

Day 6

We had an unnaturally early morning (got up at 3 am) to make it to the airport and leave this gem of a city.  I got on a 6 am flight for Albuquerque and Mom got on one for home.  On to Part 2 of the Great Western Adventure!