Whale spouts in the distance crossing the Salish Sea on the ferry from Victoria. The full moon is rising as we come into the Puget Sound and it hangs over the skyline as we approach Seattle.
Fireworks are going off down at the baseball park when we dock, which means I walk to my hotel through a sea of drunken Mariners fans. Bars I pass along the way are playing the Wallflowers and DMX and Maroon Five, respectively, but I can’t get the Frasier theme song out of my head. “It must still be the 90s in Seattle,” I think.
Little more than I layover here. I try, but fail, to sleep in. Pack up and walk along the piers for a bit, before parking myself at a coffee shop to write.
I’m supposed to catch a train to Portland at noon, but something will be wrong with one of the cars, so they’ll load us all onto a bus instead.
I don’t know that yet though, so I’m just enjoying a slow easy morning. I order a breakfast sandwich to go and wander around some more.
The city is hillier than I realized and it makes for all sorts of interesting views in the gaps between blocks or the narrow alleys, looking up toward the skyscrapers or down toward the water and Olympic Range.
I hear rushing water and find a little park, where I sit down to eat my sandwich. Ham and eggs and gooey cheese.
Seattle has been kind of a nice little bit of not much. “A palate cleanser,” I think, between Brittish Columbia and the Southern Oregon/Northern California roadtrip.
“But I don’t know what to do with this tossed salad and scrambled eggs.”