Daily Archives: July 7, 2011
Ferries and Eagles . . .
Today’s blog is a two’fer: Yesterday’s visit to Seattle, and today’s visit to the Seabeck mudflats to see the eagles.
We caught the 11:10 ferry for the 60 minute cruise across Puget Sound from Bremerton to Seattle.
During our trip we had a lot of fun watching the gulls swoop and dive in front of the ferry, riding the air currents.
One guy had a bag of Cheese Doodles and was hand feeding the many gulls. They would line up hovering in the air, waiting their turn to come and eat.
As we got closer to Seattle, and with pretty much everything we know about Seattle coming from “Frasier”, we were surprised how hilly it was.
And we also got our first glimpse of the Space Needle, a leftover from the 1962 World’s Fair.
Our first stop after leaving the ferry was at Ivar’s, a famous local clam chowder restaurant that’s been around since 1938. Jan and I each had a cup of white clam chowder to hold us over until supper.
After traipsing up some very steep hills,
our first stop was at Pike Place Market, a combination flea market/farmer’s market.
Pike Place Market runs for 6 floors of small shops and stores,
both inside and out.
Jan was immediately captivated by the many flower shops, surrounded by large bouquets of very beautiful and very inexpensive flowers.
Jan ended up with this bouquet of Sweet Peas, with a Peony for spice.
Leaving the market, we walked a few blocks, all uphill, of course, to the downtown monorail station that would take us to the Space Needle for a close-up view. We thought about a ride to the top, but the $18 each ticket didn’t seem worth it.
Coming home on the 5:30 ferry, we had a great view of Mt. Rainer, about 50 miles off to the southeast. At 14,411 feet, it’s considered one of the most dangerous volcanoes in the world.
Mt. Rainier is considered so dangerous that they evacuation signs around. A major eruption on the scale of Mt. Saint Helens, would cause very heavy damage and destruction to downtown Seattle.
Getting back to Bremerton, we headed up to the Silverdale area to have dinner at Red Robin. The food was good, but they had the AC on deep freeze, so we were all cold.
And on top of that, we were all very sore, from trudging up and up all the hills in downtown Seattle. Yes, I meant up and up, not up and down. No matter which direction we walked, it was always up, never down.
I still don’t know how they managed that.
That about wrapped up our Wednesday in Seattle.
Now for today.
Our morning was pretty much spent resting up from yesterday. But about 2 we all headed out to the nearby Seabeck mudflats. We’d been told that it’s a good place to see Bald Eagles at low tide, which was about 4 pm today.
When we arrived, at first we only saw a flock of geese plodding across the flats.
But then we started seeing eagles off around the edges of the mudflats. Here’s a young Bald Eagle who was bathing in one of the small streams still running through the area.
Then we started seeing the eagles zipping around over us, in many cases so fast it was hard to focus on them.
We also got this shot of a Bald Eagle being chased and harassed by this smaller bird.
Looking back our first juvenile had been joined by a second one.
And then a third, this one a mature one. You can even see the water he’s splashing up while bathing in the stream.
Then he spent about 10 minutes strutting around, flapping his wings to dry his feathers.
We had a great time out there, but didn’t get as many photos as we would have like, since their speed and closeness made it hard to get them in focus.
Leaving the eagles behind, we drove over to Mattioli’s Pizza, a local place we found highly recommend on the Internet, and it was really good. Really great pizza!
Coming home we made a stop at a nearby Barnes & Noble, a Best Buy, and then it was back to the RV park for the night.
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Thought for the Day:
There’s a pill for just about everything … except stupid!
sgdf
