We have been in and around Fairhaven / Bellingham today. They are two small towns next to each other in Whatcom County [think Devonport/Takapuna]. We have been catching the buses around as they are free this week because of the State Fair! All the bus drivers have been super helpful, which has been great.

Fairhaven reminds me a bit of Devonport – close to the sea, quaint shops, lots of art and places to eat. The weather has been really lovely, although I am now carrying my sweatshirt with me, as the sun is hidden behind the thick smoke that envelopes Washington State.

When we were in Fairhaven we booked our train tickets to Vancouver. We depart on Tuesday. We decided to stay here a couple of extra days, as it is cheaper than Vancouver. It is a nice place and has a bit to see and do. Our hotel, is budget, but gives us breakfast and it is easy to catch the bus from here.

There is a lot of street art and you get used to the life-size sculptures everywhere, so when one of those is ‘live’ and touches you on the arm as you go past … you leap out of your skin, freak out and then laugh out loud! Colin hadn’t noticed her / the tip jar and just seriously nearly wet his pants! We sat and had a coffee, watched it happen to a whole pile of other people and then ventured for a photo. She only needs to do two 8 hour days in Seattle and that is her work done for the week! She said she had regular breaks, but it is so not something this ‘fidgeter’ could do…a lot of mindfulness I think!

Spark is a Museum here in Bellingham that is dedicated to the electrical and radio inventions and how they changed the world we live in. Colin though it was more interesting that I did, but is probably no surprise. When the ‘docent’ joined us and started giving a sort of tour, it was much better for me. I had never realised that the grammar phone [probably because I have only seen them in a museum!] wasn’t an electrical appliance. As we were leaving we got a very quick display of the MegaZapper Tesla coils … now that was cool.

So thinking ahead, we were looking for reasonable accommodation in Vancouver for one night before our cruise … it is like looking for a needle in a haystack. It is unbelievably expensive, even the AirBnB’s!! We were both getting totally fed up and then Colin goes I found one!! So I google the address to see if it is close to the train / cruise terminals and I can’t find the address … Colin (totally fed up by now) says ‘I am just going to book it…’. Then we get a confirmation text message and he has made a booking for Vancouver, Washington State NOT Vancouver, Canada – hence it was half the price of what we were looking at!!!! Worst part is that is was a non-refundable deal with Expedia. Hmmmm – we called Expedia but because it was Friday night, they customer service ain’t open til Monday! Really – I would have though they had 24hr service – well they do actually but no-one who can make a decision on anything … basically a 24hr message service and that’s it.

San Juan Islands are pretty famous in this neck of the woods, and we decided to do a cruise which included lunch and hopefully a chance to see Orca in the wild. The Salish Sea encompasses the Islands between the Pacific Northwest of US and Victoria, Canada and the body of sea that is the Puget Sound.

Our first port of call was Friday Harbour, which was just beautiful. A sleepy seaside town, with beautiful hanging baskets, gorgeous shops and galleries (and heaps of wonderful places to eat). We wandered around here for about 90 minutes before boarding our boat for lunch and the ‘orca hunt’. With the smoke hanging over the area, trying to get nice pictures was almost impossible. The horizon in every direction was just layered with smoke. The sun couldn’t really poke it’s head out, but tried all day.

The tour companies up here are all looking for the orcas and radio each other when sightings are made. Fortunately for us we we able to find a small pod of these amazing graceful animals, who were feeding in the deep channel between two islands. They are just amazing to watch and the hour we had trailing them went by so fast. The whole area reminded me of the Bay of Islands. The day would have been perfect if it had not been for all that smoke.

So we spent Sunday catching up on washing (it has been a week?!?) and had a look around the local shopping mall [Bellis Fair Mall] and I was able to get myself a warm jacket to take to Alaska [I had lost mine rushing through Hawaii airport – that nightmare was 10 weeks ago!).

ps: sorry that the Seattle post was out of sequence – we need a good WIFI to publish them!! I hadn’t realised that it had not loaded and was sitting in ‘drafts’

Chittenden Locks and Counterweight bridge

Time flies when you are having fun!

We are leaving Seattle tomorrow and heading towards Everett (a short trip by bus North), on our way to Vancouver.

We have booked a cruise and depart on 22nd August (from Vancouver to Whittier, Alaska), so have 10 days to get ourselves up into Canada.

When I last wrote, we were staying in an AirBnB – it was a bit like a posh hostel. Nice house, ok location, clean and comfy lodgings, nice chatting with our travellers BUT when they have no respect coming in late or up and about early – you so don’t feel like being friendly any more!! We only had one night here [at this noisy AirBnB – I tell you our AirBnB is nothing short of amazing if I do say so myself!!] in between the two weeks looking after our ‘Hairy Maclary’ and another black cat (Winston).

This week we have been out to the Ballard to the Chittenden Locks, Botanical Gardens and the Nordic Museum. I also had a haircut and my toes done, so had to make two trips out there. It is such a lovely part of town, although it still does have many ‘displaced persons’.

Our first trip we did the locks and gardens. We did the locks tour, heard the history of how it is built to manage the salt water / fresh water transfer, transfers of the boats (big and small) and the fish ladder. It is a really busy system as boats / fish transfer from Puget Sound to Lake Washington and vice-versa. We watched the boats come and go and then watched the king salmon wait for their turn to enter the fish ladder. Those salmon waiting on the ‘sea side’ were hunted before our eyes, by harbour seals. An easy lunch for those seals. They drop ‘bombs’ into the sea every so often to scare the seals off, so the salmon can have any easy run at the fish ladder!

They have cruise ships (of the smaller kind) submarines and once they had a ship that was a bit too wide so they took it through tilted to one side by ballast. The story and photos of that were fascinating.

We walked through the botanical gardens, talked to the groundswoman about the squirrels, moles and the mountain beavers! We convinced her that she should make a trip to New Zealand – NZ is going to be busy after all our recommendations!

Having seen the ‘village’ at Ballard I decided I would get my hair cut – it was the nicest looking place we had been, and we had been gifted tickets to the Nordic Museum, so back out there again on the bus the next day. We found the Kangaroo & Kiwi bar, so stopped for lunch (after a haircut). Pie, mash and peas for Colin, fish with mango salsa and rice for me + 2 beers each = $65US which equates to $95NZ for lunch!! Who said America is cheap!! Actually, with the $$$ value being so low, it is making it really expensive to be here. Hopefully Canada will not quite bruise our budget so much!

Anyway, the Nordic Museum was lovely. It is a new purpose built place and has awesome displays, but a lot of reading. At one stage after WWII the Nordic countries lost 1/3 of their population to immigration. For me, I have some Swedish history [also some Irish – for those who didn’t know] so it was an interesting place to visit. You read that the Nordic people were not welcomed in America when they first came – people didn’t like their clothes or their customs (history just seems to repeat itself!!). A lovely place to visit, but too much reading for me! Colin soaked it all up, while I sloped off … soaked my feet and had my toes done!

One of the things that was on our to-do list was the Seattle underground tour. What a great experience. Our guide was great, very theatrical and knowledgeable. It is just so fascinating how the streets were built ‘way back then’. I tried to describe how this was done to mum on a video-chat but I don’t think I did a good job!! So I am going to bullet point so maybe it can make sense to you.

1. Build a three, four or more storied house
2. Expect that your ground floor will eventually become a basement!
3. Council of the day then builds retaining walls 14 feet from your ground floor, so they can build a road – at the level of your first floor.
4. You then have a built-up road in the middle of the street, sidewalks at your current ground level, with ladder to get up to street level [thinks moats without water!]
5. As years go by they eventually build all the sidewalks at road level, and now you have a basement.
6. The sidewalks have glass ‘skylights’ and these has turned purple overtime as they are UV damaged (the glass skylights were installed as a form of lighting to the basements)
7. The original ground level houses all the sewer pipes, and if you were clever you would use the ‘original space’ for ‘other‘ activities [think red light/prohibition bars] and a way to move around ‘underground’ without being seen.

We had a great guide and although the tour was only an hour, it was so worthwhile.

Seattle is a great city to wander around, and I love the Pike Place markets, so we have been back there again. Also visited the UPS waterfall garden which is the ‘birthplace’ of UPS.

My friend Jacqs [husband] is American and they emailed to say Paul had a cousin in Seattle, so we met them (Lawrie & Gwen) for coffee in the city and really enjoyed chatting with them. They also invited us to join them (and their niece/nephew) to visit the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. I am so glad we went here. What incredible people, are doing the most amazing work. I loved our visit here and wondered why it doesn’t pop up in the top 10 things to do in Seattle – it is free?! Their byline ‘arrive curious … leave inspired’ sums up the fantastic work they do.

We ‘built’ a bag for a ‘displaced person’ and you could either leave it for their staff to distribute or give it to a person yourself. We took ours away and will gift to people who live in the neighbourhood where we have been staying. The bag contains – 1 x t’shirt, 1 x small towel, hand sanitizer, a few plasters and a couple of museli bars. You are encouraged to add water, toothpaste/brush if you are able).

The last thing we did this week was a trip to the Boeing Factory. We thought we had booked a south Seattle experience (1 hour from us) but we actually booked a North Seattle experience (in Everett – which we had planned to do while in Everett!!). Anyway, after three hours of buses we were nearly there but not quite!! So ended up in an Uber for a mad dash to ‘check-in’ – if you are not there within 20 minutes of the tour your tickets are released to those on ‘stand-by’. I phoned to say we were on our way, so we were all good.

On the Boeing production line were two Air NZ dreamliners (787’s – they have 2.3 million parts!!). It was great to see them with logo on the tail – it’s the funny little things that make you proud of home! Anyways the place is huge, covers 11 acres and has 46,000 staff at the one site [who works shifts]! The factory buildings / Boeing are in the Guinness Book of Records for a few things:

• The giant doors are the largest mural in the world
• Largest building in the world by volume
• It is a ‘city’ within Everett and has its own fire department, security police, bus service [to get around the 11 acres] medical, water, power etc, etc, etc
• The staff have bikes (1,300 to ride)
• There are 150+ test pilots

Everything was colossal, you could do fun facts for pages but if you want to know more visit their you-tube channel for all flight / space / rockets / missiles / airforce planes and MORE!

Well, that is enough from us for now. Seattle has been great, but new adventures are on the horizon. Stay tuned.

ps: we also went to REI store here and caught up with Marks [who I used to work with] brother. What an amazing place – think Pack’n’Pedal on steroids!!

OMG … we had a behind the scenes tour at Funko! I still can’t believe the timing of our visit there and happening upon Heidi, actually she happened upon us!!

We had walked from our AirBnB into town to catch the bus to Snohomish, but decided to visit Funko first. We had no idea what to expect there, except that we had seen the ‘pop-culture’ figures on the outside of the building (and our new friends Jerry & Chloe had said we should visit).

The capped crusader keeps a watching brief over the Funko HQ

In the ‘staffroom’ at Funko HQ – chair is from Prince’s personal estate!!!!!

From arriving and walking in the door, to finally leaving – it was just an amazing experience. The two security guards who welcomed us when we arrived were just giving us the low-down when one of them recognised our accents. He had been at Otago University for a year. And then Heidi went past and must of overhead our conversations and introduced herself to us. She is the Director of Capitol Construction, Facilities and Security. She had also been to NZ – I mean what is the chance of finding two people in Everett who have been to NZ?!? (Actually we met another young lad at the bus station who had been on a working holiday in NZ for a year – but he was technically from Whidbey Island).

Heidi gave us a quick tour of the public showroom and then took us behind the scenes to the staff area. All I can say is “I want to work here”! WOW! What an incredible company with a wonderful environment and the most famous products. The staff area is A M A Z I N G!! The retail store is A M A Z I N G!! Heidi went out of her way in a busy week (they launch the new Wetmore Forest in the store, and host a block party this Saturday). I mean she was busy!! But she took the time and made us feel so welcome. We had such an incredible time here and were just wowed :-).

We felt incredibly fortunate to have had this experience. We were absolutely buzzing when we left. (check out the Funko story on Netflix or their http://www.funko.com ). For my friends who love pop-culture [and there are a few of you …. you will be soooooo jealous]

So we finally made it to the bus station, only to discover that the bus only runs hourly in the middle of the day so we grabbed an Uber and headed over to Snohomish, which we had quickly visited on Sunday with Jerry & Chloe (who we met on Sunday). What an amazing cute place. There is amazing antique, curios and niche shops – a town that boasts being the antique capital of the northwest. Gorgeous houses in and around town and a lovely river that runs through. We thoroughly enjoyed wandering around and exploring this gorgeous town.

We headed back to over to Everett and shared an evening chatting with our wonderful AirBnB hosts – Elsie and Bill, who made us so welcome in their home. We chatted to them every night we stayed and may have convinced them to visit NZ! (It is actually really cheap for them to visit us at the moment … the NZ$$ has dropped again – now down to 0.63 which is making USA a bit expensive!)

The next day we headed into Everett again and explored this lovely town. It had pianos all around town on the ‘sidewalks’ which people just sat down and played, and then went on their way. There was also amazing street art and sculpture all around town.

This guy is watching the girls playing …

Couldn’t resist playing with the girls 🙂

Hide and seek ….

We visited the Schack Art Centre which was hosting the ‘Americans Interned’ exhibition. It was one family’s story shared through art, and film. You really don’t think of America the great having had concentration camps. It was compelling and heart wrenching, and to think that a few short weeks ago we had been at the Washington State Fair Grounds (for the Hot Rod show) and had no idea of the part it played in the history of the incarceration of the Japanese Americans during WWII. There was also other works from the Artists – Jan & Chris Hopkins – which were less emotive, but very wonderful.

So today we have caught the bus up to Bellingham in Whatcom County, still in Washington State. I had wanted to catch the train, but I made a promise to Colin before we left that I wouldn’t over-organised this trip and just go with the flow. He wanted to just turn up at the train station when we were ready to leave and ‘catch the train’ … I felt we should book, so when we where heading to Snohomish we called into the transit centre, only to discover that the train is one of the most popular train trips in America, and only goes up the coast once a day …. and yes it was booked for the next few days!!!!!!!!!! So no train trip for me! We are going to see if we can book it from here to Vancouver, but will go into town tomorrow and fingers crossed we can make a booking, so I can have my train ride (there may be tears if I don’t!).

Until next time … keep your fingers crossed for me!

We left Seattle yesterday and caught the bus up here to Everett. The Uber driver who delivered us to our AirBnB wondered why we were staying in Everett … he called it Everott !!!! Then I was thinking, OMG where have we come!!

As he dropped us to our AirBnB, we wondered what on earth he was talking about. Gorgeous sculptures, houses and streets were along the way and when were dropped outside our AirBnB (early) it was in front of this beautiful house, and an absolutely wonderful host Elsie. It is always hard when guests turn up early and you don’t feel like you are ready, and Elsie was so gracious to welcome us. Elsie is an artist/sculpture and is one of life’s wonderful people – we are happy to be staying here with her and her husband Bill.

She and I have the same approach to our AirBnB hosting … homemade cookies, breakfast and just generally love meeting people and hosting them in your home. We are going to extend our stay here and explore a bit more. This house was actually Bob Dillons cousins house (Bob Fink). It has this amazing dining room table which was on board a ship of an explorer – Admiral Peary – the table was the ‘chart table’, on board the ship he was on, when he was in the North Pole in the early 1900’s.

This beautiful old (circa 1900’s) three storied house (+ basement) which has creaking wooden wooden floors, eclectic mix of furniture and art and feels just wonderful to be in. The front porch is just wonderful to sit out and relax in this beautiful quiet neighbourhood. It is one street back from Grand Drive which overlooks the Puget Sound, and the waterfront.

The city is developing the waterfront and even with the small amount it has done, they have transformed it. The pedestrian bridge and viewing bridge is still being constructed (bummer for us – 8km to get down there!!! You have to go around the freeway and train tracks – a bit like driving along from the bottom of the Auckland Harbour bridge towards to the city, although Auckland is beautiful compared to this! – maybe we will come back in a few years and see how it is progressing).

There be a New Zealand flag here 🙂

We headed on down to the Sunday markets and after a quick look around ordered a pizza and asked to join a table of a couple who were just finishing their lunch. Jerry and Chloe are now friends for life. They invited us to join them at Blue Water Distillery for a tasting ( Vodka / Gin ), and then we ended up spending the rest of the afternoon / evening with them. They took us to Snohomish Town for a quick look (we are returning here soon!) and then to their property to sample blackberries, blueberries and huckleberries.

They invited us to join them at an ‘open mic’ night where Jerry plays / sings, along with other musicians. We had a lovely meal here, followed by homemade blackberry pie which Chloe had made and bought with us. We chatted easily about our families (they have 6 kids, 11 grandkids) and were so warmingly welcomed by them. We had a wonderful night and so enjoyed meeting these two wonderful people. I hope that our paths will cross again in the future.

Not so sure about this purple one ?!?

And this is a bit tooooooo close for comfort!

We have been exploring our neighbourhood with ‘Ike’ the most delightful Golden Retriever (also there is a wee toy Poodle called ‘Bella’ who is 14).

We walked about 5kms and seen the most beautiful houses. Unfortunately because of the fires in Canada, we have this very smokey horizon so have no views out to Puget Sound.

There are lots of ‘community libraries’ in people’s gardens … I am so going to have one of these when I return. Colin will be able to build me something wonderful 🙂

Generally this area of Everett is historical and the houses are Grand, and they have to comply with the historic guidelines and standards. It is wonderful to walk around here. I am sure like every town we will find the not so nice!

So from my happy place on the ‘porch’ with Ike, I’ll sign out – there is so much more to explore.

Well we only had one day of cold weather, and it wasn’t really that bad. The last few days have been stunning. Mostly around 28-30 degrees.

With the SeaFair Festival on over the last few days, we have had the Blue Angel fighter jets in the sky every day.

I absolutely love them …. they are very cool! I know they cost a lost and it seems frivolous BUT with the amazing flying skills of these pilots, I can understand why they are an asset to the airforce!!

We decided to go to the aquarium and I so glad we did. I was a bit reluctant, but it had such great reviews. It was just fabulous.

Everything was so well done (except the seal enclosure!!). We ended up being here for more than 3 hours. It was really busy, but then it is still the school holidays here.

The next day we went to the Pacific Science Museum. It was a great museum with lots of hands-on things, a butterfly enclosure and a host of small animal exhibits.

Colin blowing bubbles …

Colin loved all the hands on things and I could see that this would be a great place to visit with kids. We spent quite a bit of time here and had ‘soup in a cob’ for lunch. I love that you can get a meal in a bread loaf … most popular is the chowder, but as we don’t really like seafood we had soup.

From there we walked to the famous ‘gum wall’ – OMG gross, but fascinating and so, so busy!

We chewed a bit gum and left our mark, so to speak. They have tried to get rid of this ‘attraction’ several times, but have now officially given up.

It is right next to the Pike Place Public Markets. What a fun place, so vibrant and interesting – just love it. We will visit there again over the next week, while we finish exploring in the city.

We are just in an AirBnB tonight (on 24th Street), as our house sitting assignment was in two parts. The family holidayed in the south for a week, and then have a night at home, and then are heading north for a week. It is a lovely AirBnB, and has other travellers staying here so we will spend the evening socialising before heading back to 17th Street tomorrow. Downtown Seattle is really close.

One more week here in Seattle and then we are heading to Everett for a few days … it is a short bus trip north, as we head to Vancouver.

Not sure what has happened to the weather but it is cold today! Only 18 degrees C.

Yesterday we went to the MoPOP Museum which is this amazing building with the Monorail running through it. It is about popular culture … the current special exhibit is ‘Marvel’ [think Spider-Man, Captain American …] but it had long queues so we just visited the main museum.

The ‘scared to death’ exhibition explored the world of horror movies and was really terrifying / interesting. We had seen a lot of them through the 80’s [I know … so last century!]. We watched all the videos of interviews with the directors and producers, saw a whole lot of displays of memorabilia from film and TV [think Chainsaw massacre, Friday 13th, Walking Dead, Buffy the Vampire Slayer]. Just the dim light and the music playing gave you a sense of anxiety!

The next exhibit was science fiction [ think Star Wars, Star Trek, Lost in Space, Terminator, Blade Runner ….] Again, some great props on display from a range of movies.

From there it was into fantasy [think Harry Potter, Wizard of OZ, Princess Bride, Lord of the Rings] and then to Jimmi Hendrix / Nirvana (we are actually staying just a few blocks up from Jimmi Hendrix park), followed by the sound lab (as it is the school holidays here, it was really busy). Such a cool idea to have all these ‘labs’ with drums, guitars, keyboards etc, etc and you can go in and play to your hearts content.

So Jimmi Hendrix is a bit famous in our neighbourhood . He had such an impact on music and was probably before his time … it took 22 years to induct him into the ‘Hall of Music’. A whole park is dedicated to him, and we walk our wee dog through it everyday. It is also the home of the Northwest African American Museum. It is only a small display, but thought provoking! I have to be honest, my knowledge of the African American history is a bit limited, although what I do know isn’t very good.

Their (‘blacks’) pilgrimage to the North-west to escape slavery, together with the ‘Black Panther’ movement for equal rights seems to have come a long way since the 1960’s … then you hear / see just how far we have to go, with young people today experiencing similar exclusion and racial tensions in their communities (although not slavery where they are chained and persecuted !). America (actually not just America!!) has a long way to go to bridge this divide!

Modern slavery is having ‘black people or immigrants’ – as the ones who are employed as cleaners, garbage men, street cleaners or any of the jobs that ‘we’ [who’s we?] don’t like to do! I am a bit at odds that young people, younger than our boys, saying they want more than this for themselves … we haven’t come far as a ‘modern, enlightened human race’. We have quite a few houses around where we are staying that have posters in the windows – ‘Black lives matter’ or ‘you are welcome here – black or white’. And those that we have talked to are gorgeous. ❤️

In the paper here today at here is a letter to the editor saying ‘we are not quite there yet’ … ‘when a person of colour can drive through a wealthy neighbourhood and not be pulled over for suspicion of having stolen that car, or a college degree is valid for its worth, not because of preferential admissions … then ‘we will be free’.

I read a Jodi Picoult book while staying in Las Vegas (thanks Katie for leaving such a great read) – ‘Small Great Things’. It is actually going to be made into a movie – not sure if it is for the big screen or a Netflix thing, but I often find myself thinking about this book [perhaps because I am here?!?]. If you get a chance to read it DO … it has changed my understanding of ‘being white’ or ‘being black’. “Small Great Things” centers on a labor/delivery nurse who takes care of newborns at a Connecticut hospital who’s ordered not touch the baby of a white supremacist couple. When the baby dies in her care, she’s then taken to court by the couple. I cried in this book … I don’t understand ‘us’ sometimes! All we can do is embrace life as it is and LOVE each other.

So we have been exploring our neighbourhood and it is an older suburb. It is an eclectic mix of people and houses. The house prices are going crazy here like they have been in Auckland. A lot of the older houses are being removed and making way for apartments.

It is at odds with itself … gorgeous villas and bungalows [some needing renovation] with awful / lovely new buildings amongst them. It is a bit scruffy in areas – the Council doesn’t seem to keep the streets tidy [and neither do the residents] for the most part. The developers do have to tidy up street etc, but then it is losing it’s charm. There are a lot of vege / flower gardens in the berm, and a lot of them are just a mess, or so overgrown. One house = three apartments….sound familiar?!

This weekend is the Boeing Sea Fair Air Show is on Fri / Sat / Sun and today they have been in ‘practise’ mode. The US Navy Blue Angels fighter jets have been flying above us all day.

I love these fighter pilots / jets flying around. They sound / look so cool …. wonder how you get a ‘hot lap’? We hope to see more of this on Sunday.

Until next time ….. xx

They said it would be cooler up here!! Well the first few days were really hot, not quite like Vegas but not cool either. Today is the first day since San Fran, that I am in something other than shorts!

We stayed at the Hyatt, Dowtown Seattle. What a great concept. It is part of the Hyatt group but is called Hyatt House. It is such a lovely hotel, clean, tidy not quite five star, but certainly not basic. And it did breakfast, which was amazing and then the dining room became a bar in the evening for happy hour. It was awesome, lovely rooms and right next to the Space Needle, Seattle Centre and a short walk to the waterfront.

On Saturday when we arrived, there was so much going on, so many people about and they seemed to be setting up for an event by the hotel. When we were checking in they told us about the Alaska Airlines Seafair Torch Light Parade [A celebration of the diverse cultural landscape that Seattle has]. It is on each summer and has 120 floats and/or bands etc. After we checked our bags in, we wandered around the floats all gathering for the parade, had free lunch, got free samples and won tickets to a music festival [hmmmm had to play a game a bit like ‘beer pong’ and I won tickets first time!! Daniel / Jason – why would that be?!?]

Anyway, happy hour was a few hours away, so we walked down to the waterfront and through the Olympic Sculpture Park. So neat to have a free park like this with amazing views and sculpture that is all of a very large scale. There were three cruise liners in town as well, so it was busy everywhere.

We walked back to the hotel for happy hour and chatted with an Australian couple who were very nice. They were telling us about their trip and how fabulous it was to be on holiday for 3 months, that they had house sitters …… and then asked how long we were travelling ….. it sorta seemed a bit like skiting to say what we were doing! We had a couple of beers with them and then headed out to watch the parade before dinner – a big party for me 🙂

Well every parade needs a poooper scooper!

The parade was huge – 120 floats spread out across 3.5km. I didn’t think it was ever going to end and when it did …. 2 hours later (9.45pm) …. the restaurants were closed!! I had the choice of McD’s, or chips and peanuts from the hotel. Mc’D’s won and so I had the famous ‘Big Mac’ for dinner on my birthday 😜

The next day [after a fabulous breakfast] we walked down to the Piers and did the harbour cruise. It was such a lovely day, and the tour was great. From there we walked back up to Seattle centre and had a look at the giant water feature that is designed for play – the kids [and a few adults] were having such a great time. What a wonderful thing to have.

From there we walked back to the hotel via the ‘sonic bloom’ flower garden. 5 huge [15m] flowers that soak up the sunlight to ‘light’ themselves at night but during the day, they play music, and depending on how many people are near the stems a set of harmonic notes are released to simulate a chorus. They are so very cool.

After happy hour at our hotel, we headed up the Space Needle for the night sky. It was amazing at night and not quite as scary as the day. We went back up after breakfast the next morning and I found it very difficult being up there in the daylight! My legs were like jelly. This being scared of heights is new to me, and I need to find a way to get past it …. more high things?!?

We have now transferred out to our next assignment looking after 1 x cat and 1 x dog [who looks like Hairy Maclary]. We are just up the road from Jimmi Hendrix park, so there is a bit of history to explore while out walking the dog!

So, for now that’s it … will explore for a few days and let you know what we are up to.

We flew from Las Vegas to SEATAC, which is the main airport 1/2 way between Seattle and Tacoma. Tacoma is a wonderful place, loved being here.

When we arrived at SEATAC and walked outside there was an express bus heading to Tacoma. We jumped on and it was only $US3 each … bargain! On the bus we met Herb, who works at Le Mays and he was super impressed that we were from NZ, and we promised we would say hi the next day, as we were planning to visit.

I love that there are all these sculptures everywhere.

We caught an Uber [from the transit centre] to our AirBnB in Proctor. It was in a fabulous location, on a great bus route, although the first night we walked down to the old town and went to music in the parks, and then had dinner at RAM on the waterfront. Great food and beer!

We talked to a couple who are planning a trip to NZ next July, and might want to book into our AirBnB!!!!! They also thought they might like to visit Fiji, but we think we may have convinced them Rarotonga is better!

The next morning we caught the #11 bus into town [having purchased a $US5 day pass] and headed to the LeMay – America’s Car Museum. How lucky were we to discover that once a month during the summer, they take some of the cars outside for a spin and you can ride for free … such fun.

The building is purpose built holds, classic cars, race cars and other motoring stuff [think petrol pumps!, garage …]. There are over 500 cars from a private collection and they are all beautifully restored. Colin may have oooooohed and aaaaahed more than I did! but I did enjoy our visit and I so loved my ride in the ‘dicky’ seat, and other classic cars.

We found Herb again, and he very kindly took us as his guest on the racing simulators. Having recently done this with the D1NZ crew, I did a pretty good job – actually I did a great job and much better than Colin. We chatted to Herb and his colleagues who told us about a car show on at the Washington State Fair grounds on Fri, Sat, Sun. So we decided that we would head on out to Puyallup to the Fair Ground the next day.

After LeMay we headed to the Chihuly museum of glass. It was very cool to see this place, although I don’t know that I would recommend it!! The glass art on the bridge and outside the museum is all free and if you go to the Tacoma Art Museum (TAM) there is more there as well ….. so you can see plenty for free.

Chihuly ‘exhaust’!

On the day we visited Chihuly, the ‘hot-box’ was working with all the furnaces on and a team of people making one piece of art. It was soooooooooo hot …… I felt like I was back in Vegas! So many people, do one small thing each to make one very cool piece of art.

We caught the bus out to Point Defiance a couple of times and wandered around the rose gardens, the park, along the waterfront and had dinner on the balcony at Anthony’s by the sea. Deer roam free, and despite having seen quite a few now, it is always a surprise when they appear out of nowhere.

We walked into Proctor on day two and had breakfast at Safeways supermarket. (The supermarkets are great here) We took the urban-hike to get to Proctor and a deer with two ‘bambi’s’ just popped out on the path in front of us. Not bothered by us at all.

Then we caught the bus into town and visited the TAM which is only a small museum but it had some very cool art … and some history on the Northwest including the native Indians.

I made some ‘art’ for the installation with the only piece of disposable trash I had on me!!!

This giant dog is made out of cardboard!

These two sculptures were also made out of cardboard, and had been bronzed.

With our bus card we were able to travel to Puyallup, to the Washington State Fair ground, to one on the largest car meets in North America. They were expecting up to 3,000 cars on the Saturday, but on Friday when we went there was only half as many and we didn’t even see them all. I will share just a few here …. the rest are saved to Facebook, as there is so many. I decided that I would only take photos of red cars – thought that might be a way to narrow it down …. that sorta worked, but then there was a really cool black car, oh and a green one … a then a yellow ……………

Our AirBnB host Jason, was friendly and welcoming and was impressed that we had taken the time to visit Tacoma. It is often over-looked but it was just beautiful, and if you are in Seattle, you should take the time to visit / stay here to. Jason was a great host (but he had a terrible bed! – I told him) and we enjoyed talking with him. He was even so kind to drop us back to the transit centre to catch the bus up to Seattle … a posh ride in his convertible SAAB.

We now have two nights at the Hyatt House, Downtown Seattle and then we will be transferring to the ‘burbs’ for our next assignment.

Our next post will be from Seattle.

So many people said “… what will you do for 5 weeks?” I can honestly say that we haven’t done it all yet! I would love to come back … when it’s a bit colder and do a hike or three!

We have had a few weather bombs with incredible thunder and lightning, and flash floods over the last week. It is monsoon season, and these weather bombs appear out of nowhere and then it’s all on. You get warnings on your phone, and when they say expect a flash flood … believe them. We have a storm water drain over the back fence and it goes from bone drying to fast flowing in minutes!

I took these pictures at night…it was still so hot. The power was out for a lot of the area but fortunately not for us (how would I have coped without the air-con?). There is carnage everywhere with branches/ trees down and a lot of cleaning up to be done.

Yesterday we received this weather warning! It was a dust storm coming up from Arizona… it was like ‘pea soup’. We spent most of the day inside, as I sure didn’t want to aggravate my lungs … they can be a bit delicate sometimes! And then we had a lovely coolish evening.

We met a fabulous lady called Lois on 4th July…she had recently been to NZ and is hosting people from NZ from the International friendship group she belongs to. We were fortunate to catch up with her again and she took us to Mt Charleston in the Spring Mountains, and for lunch at the top.

It was absolutely wonderful to see her again, she is so full of life, has a sense of adventure and is full of mischief!! She was determined that we were having a tour of the chalets up there, and after asking at the reception [who said no!], she followed the maintenance man who she / we charmed and so he let us in one of the chalets for a looksee- what a great place to stay winter or summer.

After lunch she took us on a little tour of the community and we generally had a nosey about. I took a photo of Colin with all the letter boxes – I love they way they do mail here, in one central point. We even have that where we are staying. 16 letterboxes – it means only one stop every so often for the UPS person! When I think of all those funny little right-of-ways up our street and what a pain in the neck it is to go up and down them [I know this because Jason had a paper round …. !!!!)

This is a ski resort in the winter and a wonderfully cooooool place to visit in the summer!

Not sure about the YELLOW house … hummers! Didn’t really blend in like everything else!!

Colin blended in! 🙂

There were awesome rock structures all along the road.

Lois then decided that she was taking us to see the horses at Cold Creek Ranch, which was just up the road [another 30 miles up the road!]. But it was so worth it. We drove in past the State Prison which is the largest in Nevada and borders the Indian Springs area and the other end of the Spring Mountain Reserve area. Red Rock is the other side, which we visited a few weeks ago.

Cold Creek is an off the grid community, about 40 miles from Las Vegas. It sits at about 6,000 feet and again is cooler than ‘town’. Lois was determined that we were going to see the wild horses. We drove all the way up into the community to find them (at least 20km). We saw a few on the horizon, but then found a rough little road which led us to this group. They weren’t really interested in us until I threw out a cinnamon bun with icing!! (Did it say don’t feed the wild horses …. oooops!). They loved it, so our afternoon tea became their afternoon tea! A couple of the herd came close to our wee car and stuck their heads in for a nosey!!! Couldn’t put the windows up quick, as the car was off!! Colin hung out the window for a selfie pic!!! This is the man who I can’t get to go on a horse ride with me, cause he doesn’t really trust horses! So what does he do … get up close and personal with wild ones!!!!!!

Really !!!!!!!

Well we had a wonderful day with Lois, and hearing about her mad escapades over the years. Her (and her husband) before he passed, travelled all around the world and have cruised heaps. Lois still travels a lot with her international friendship group (it is a bit like having a pen pal – except you visit them, how cool is that and cheap too!)

We finally got ourselves to the Neon ‘Bone yard’ Museum and did the night tour. Lots of fabulous history from our guide about the various hotels, The Mob and the cost of these signs!! Fun fact: all of the signs were leased, as the maintenance of them was so high! The Neon businesses, had the whole business completely tied up. If you did buy a sign, the maintenance charges were so high, that eventually you went back to leasing.

After our tour we headed into Fremont Street to soak up some of the atmosphere!! It really is a no holds barred place – I described it to Daniel as ‘human soup’. There was some brilliant music (3 stages), some clever street art, some fabulous (and some trashy!!) buskers and lots of people begging!! A fun night out here!

I had to hide behind another man to get this photo, as he wanted money if you were taking a photo of him! And the girls with Colin wanted money too! Oooops – hadn’t realised that I would need a swag of $5ers!! Late night for us – didn’t get in until 1am!

Another day out with Lois on Monday to Boulder City to see the desert big horned sheep. [They sorta look like a cross between a deer and a goat!]. We were lucky enough that a small group (about 30) came in off the wilderness and sat under a tree in the park. Colin of course wanted to get up close and personal ….. not sure about all this getting close to nature – we are heading to bear country!!

Just up the road is the St Jude’s Ranch – a ranch for abused, pregnant and neglected children. We met with one of the staff and she gave us the history and a tour – what an inspiring place. They offer a home for up to 60 kids, become their guardians and give them a chance at life again. They attend the local schools, have wonderful facilities on-site and are nurtured back to ‘health’. They are gifted scholarships, work in the shop on-site, and generally supported to ‘just be normal’. I loved visiting here and while we didn’t meet any of the kids, their photos and stories abound the walls. Love, love, loved coming here. Love does make the world go around 🙂

As we heading up the road to the famous Boulder City hotel for lunch, I did reflect on how ‘privileged’ we are to be doing this trip.

Lunch was huge – Lois and I shared a chicken pot pie and then had room for dessert 🙂 Colin had corned beef hash – he was in his happy place. After lunch we took in the small museum about the history of the Boulder Dam … just when you thought you couldn’t learn any more about the dam …. you do!

So tomorrow we fly out to Tacoma (just south of Seattle) for our next adventure, but I just wanted to share some pictures of where we have been staying. Katie’s place has been wonderful and we have loved being here (although I have had enough of the temperatures now!) and have met some lovely people.

Ps: Road Rules – I loved these three things …

1. we should adopt ‘turn right on a red light’ [although it would be left for us!]
2. ‘yield’ to a flashing yellow arrow to turn left [would be right for us]
3. At some round-a-bouts the entry speed is ’20mph’ – so much easier to navigate when everyone has to slow down [nearly everyone does]. Great for us because going around these the wrong way, still takes a bit of thinking about – even after 5 weeks!

These three things alone make driving here so much easier.

Oooooooops blog was tooooo big!