Days 35 & 36: Seattle

Finally reached the Pacific Ocean! After travelling a total of 4800 km on trains, the entire length of the Capitol Limited line from Washington, DC to Chicago and then the Empire Builder from Chicago to Seattle!

Caught my first glimpse of the Pacific at the port city of Everett, Washington. Though Puget Sound looks more like a lake than an ocean! From the train I spotted several bald eagles on the beach, as well as blue herons.

Puget Sound

The train rolled into Seattle almost half an hour early! I left my bag at the baggage check in King Street Station and then followed the Trails and Rails guys' advice and headed for Klondike National Park, actually a small museum only two blocks from the railway station in Seattle's historic Pioneer Square district, to learn all about the Klondike Gold Rush of 1897-1898.  In only two years 100,000 people headed for the Klondike, from all over the US, Canada and the world; of these, only 40,000 actually made it as far as Dawson, and only 300 actually made their fortune! The rest either died, gave up and turned back before reaching their destination, or arrived only to find that all the claims had already been staked and the gold was all gone. But some of them said though they struggled through the harsh Yukon winter and walked thousands of miles only to leave penniless, they would have done it all again for even less! Now that's the true spirit of adventure! And the gold rush left behind it many ghost towns, but also two towns that now thrive: Seattle, Washington, the point of departure or transit for the trip northwards, and Skagway, Alaska.

The museum was fascinating (and free). After leaving I headed for downtown, stopping at Pike Place Market to get a bite to eat. I ended up staying in this fascinating place for a lot longer than it took to get a bite to eat, and then whiling away the afternoon in the shops nearby, so once again my intention of seeing the Museum of Pop Culture - formerly the Music Experience Project, in a building by Frank Gehry - was foiled!

The Pike Place Fish Guys are still at it!
Tossing those salmon about

The Seattle waterfront

Downtown Seattle

In downtown Seattle

In the afternoon I went back to the station to retrieve my pack and meet up with Tom, who drove me back to Tom and Bruce's house, where I nested in the cosy basement bedroom.

The next day I stayed home putting my clothes through an actual washing machine for the first time since Toronto and getting caught up on a few things while Tom and Bruce were at work, then Bruce took the afternoon off to have a picnic and go for a walk in Discovery Park with their new dog, Luna. On the path around the headland we had an amazing view of Mt. Rainier. 

Mt. Rainier

Bruce, the new dog Luna and the old Land Rover

I had been to Seattle a few times before, in the '80s, and then Amy Childs took me and the kids on her personal whirlwind tour of Seattle last time I was here, in 2014, and you can see pictures of all the places we went to here. But this time around Bruce took me somewhere I had never been before: to the locks and the fish ladder. The locks divide the salt water of Puget Sound from the fresh water of Lake Washington, and the fish ladder allows the salmon to get past this barrier. When we visited the Sockeye salmon were on their way through. 

Sockeye salmon on their way up the fish ladder

The fish ladder consists of 21 pools through which the salmon leap, travelling upstream against the current, taking their time as they gradually learn to adapt from life in salt water to life in fresh water. Though made of concrete, these pools mimic the currents of the 21 natural pools that were originally on the site, separated by waterfalls, which were replaced by locks to make Lake Washington navigable. Add to that a a railway bridge that opens up from time to time to let tall-masted sailboats through, and throw in a few seals and plenty of blue herons feasting on salmon on either side of the locks, and you have a lot of interesting things to watch, all in one place! 

Railway bridge opening up to let a sailboat through downstream of the locks

The locks in action

In the evening we met Bruce's son Ryan and his family for dinner at a beautiful spot on the lake in Kirkland. A perfect west coast ending to a perfect west coast day!

Dinner party!