Saturday, September 8, 2007

Greetings from the Northwest pt 2!

Hello again! Today we are flying back from Seattle to Minneapolis, ending our quick tour of the Northwest. We miss our dogs desperately so are happy to be heading back.
Thursday, we took the ferry from Seattle to Victoria B.C.. This was 2.5 hours of ferry time, which itself is not so bad. However, we were surrounded by a huge group of tourists from Alabama. They seemed like decent folks, a little loud with proudly thick drawls who started drinking the moment they stepped on board. One interesting thing- I did finally figure out who watches the Redneck Comedy Tour because they kept quoting Larry the Cable Guy, and boy howdy, were they howling at that stuff. Fortunately for them, there wasn't a piano wire or anything else capable of providing a good strangling in my hands. Nor could I get enough distance between the ceiling and floor to hang myself, so I suffered silently- or at least as silently as I ever suffer.
From Victoria we cabbed it to The Butchart Gardens- the gardening envy of every gay man on earth only without the plant labels. I'm not even going to try to describe how stunning the gardens were. Let's just say we spent about 4.5 hours strolling around taking it all in. The only slightly disappointing bit was the Japanese garden- this after seeing the Portland Japanese garden. It was still quite lovely, but very non-traditional in its form. After the gardens, we tooled around Victoria for a little while, then sat with our Alabama friends for another 2.5 hour cruise.
Yesterday, we trotted around downtown Seattle. When on vacation, I feel obliged to do at least one stupid tourist thing. So, this time I chose the Space Needle. Yawn. Pretty view, but geez, $16?? After that we ate at Mama's Mexican Kitchen which seems to have the coolest wait staff I've ever encountered. We heart Blithe the waitress. She recommended we visit the Puyallup Fair and so we did. This is a massive version of the Minnesota State Fair that goes on for 3 weeks. The crowds were spread out a lot so getting around was easy. We watched a 12 year old girl win the largest pumpkin contest with an entry that came in at 1161 pounds- a new fair record. The strangest thing we saw was the 4-H cat display. Girls, and maybe some boys, created cat homes from kennels. Strange, especially since the cats were in there too. Another interesting thing- you know how we have lines for Sweet Martha's Cookies? The Puyallup Fair has LONG lines for hot scones filled with butter and raspberry jelly. 3 later I was hooked. Yum. All in all a fun day.
Today, we return the Jeep rental and head back at about 3:00. Goodbye, Northwest! (One day I hope to say that to the airline of the same name.)

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