We’re going on vacation this week. We’re leaving on Thursday rather than our usual Saturday; and we’re going to Seattle, not the Jersey Shore. I’m excited to be doing something different. I love beach weeks but we spent our last two vacations at the beach, and it is time for a change.
I don’t love the Thursday to Thursday schedule, but airfare was really significantly more expensive for Saturday flights; so much so that it made a schedule change very much worthwhile. And what I really don’t love is a 7 AM outgoing flight, forcing me to do absolutely all of my packing the night before because 4:30 in the morning is no time to pack for a trip. But the 7 AM flight is one of the cheapest direct flights, and I really wanted a direct flight, so there it is. We’ll gain time on the flight out and so we’ll arrive early in the day.
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I haven’t been to the West Coast in a long time - since 2000 - but I remember that we woke up early every day because we were still on East Coast time. Our flight leaves at 7:10 AM and arrives in Seattle at 9:45 AM, and we have no official plans for that first day so we’ll just get to hang around and explore a bit.
As always on the day before a long trip, I’m feeling a vague sense of dread and unease. It’s homesickness in advance, which I promise you is a real thing. But I’ll be over it the moment I arrive at the airport. For now, it’s time to think about what to pack and perhaps more importantly, what to leave behind. I’m taking two purses with me, and I already know which two, and that is half the battle. Now I just have to pick a jacket or maybe two, and three pairs of shoes. Everything else will be pretty easy.
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It's way too early on Thursday morning, and I'm on my way to Dulles Airport. We hired a local man who runs his own little private taxi service, and he picked us up in a spotless Toyota Highlander at zero dark thirty. I'm in the back seat and we're about to exit the Beltway to 66 to pick up the Dulles Toll Road. There's an absurd amount of traffic on the road for what is essentially the middle of the night, but that's the DMV for you.
I finished a crazy amount of work yesterday and then I turned on my out of office, shut down my computer and went swimming for an hour. The water was perfect. Then I came home to narrow down my jacket and shoe selections.
I thought about packing carry on only, and I was serious this time, I'm telling you. But I just couldn't decide what to leave behind so I pulled out my suitcase and packed pretty much everything. I'll probably wear only about half of what I brought but I don't care. If you're going to check a bag you might as well fill it up. That checked bag is costing me $45 and I am getting my money's worth.
It's 0515 now and we're about to pull up to the Delta terminal. More later.
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After a very easy and trouble free flight, we landed in Seattle at 940 local time. We retrieved our checked bags and then bought Orca cards for Seattle public transit, and boarded the Link light rail for the trip downtown.
Public transportation from the airport to our hotel neighborhood was my older son's idea. Like me, he loves public transportation. Unlike me, he romanticizes it because he didn't grow up taking the bus and the subway literally everywhere. It was possibly not the best idea to take the train with a week's worth of luggage but it's all good. We got there.
It was too early to check into our hotel so we parked our luggage and set out to explore. My husband and I both worked at Nordstrom when we were young and so we wanted to see the original Nordstrom store. It was quite beautiful. I really miss old fashioned downtown department stores.
We are planning to visit the Space Needle, of course, but my younger son suggested that we visit the Skyview Observatory in the Columbia Center building first, and he was not wrong. It's the tallest building in the Pacific Northwest, and the observatory has a 360 degree panoramic view of the city. Sadly, smoke from the Spokane wildfires obscured the view of the mountains but Seattle is beautiful even without the mountains.
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At 4 o'clock, we finally checked into our hotel. We were exhausted. But we regrouped.
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We're in a Ford Transit passenger van right now, with a small group of fellow tourists, on our way to Deception Pass State Park. Our driver and tour guide is a very lovely young woman named Karen, who seems to absolutely love her job. After a morning in the park, we're going out on a boat to see whales. Whales! It's a beautiful day, and I'm so excited.
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We saw whales! We sailed out into the Salish Sea from beautiful Anacortes, in a very comfortable little touring boat with indoor cabins up and downstairs and lots of sightseeing room on the deck. And there were so many sights to see. We saw dozens of bird species, including an osprey in flight, which is apparently unusual. We saw seals and sea lions swimming in the icy water and then warming themselves on sunny rocks. And then about an hour into the cruise, we saw Scuttle the Humpback Whale, diving and surfacing. Scuttle showed us his whole tail, which is how the naturalists on board identified him. They are very proprietary toward their beloved humpbacks.
It was November cold on the bow of the boat, but having been warned, I was dressed for it as were most of the other people. The sun reflecting on the water wasn't warm enough to burn off the mist rising off the surface, and the effect was quite spectacular. We stayed in place for a bit, watching Scuttle dive and waiting for him to surface again. I could have done that all afternoon.
After another 30 minutes of cruising, the captain came over the PA to announce that orcas had been spotted and that we were going to try to get as close as possible. People had returned to the cabins but everyone scrambled to get back on the deck to find a good viewing spot. We saw the first flash of black and white, so quick that I wasn't sure if we'd seen anything at all. But it was a pair of orcas, who obliged us by surfacing over and over, showing us their eye spots and their dorsal fins and their black and white bellies.
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I'm not an outdoor person. I'm outsidey but not outdoorsy. But that day of hiking and whale watching was one of my favorite ever vacation days. 10/10.
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Yesterday, we visited the Space Needle, Museum of Pop Culture, and Chihuly Gardens. The MCP was dull. Chihuly, which I had been quite ready to skip, was pretty spectacular. And the Space Needle, no matter what anyone says, is wonderful and absolutely worth a visit. The Monorail and the Space Needle, both constructed for the 1962 World's Fair, are quintessential symbols of mid century American energy and optimism and while I don't pretend that 20th century America was perfect or anything close to it, I do miss the energy and the optimism.
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It's Sunday now, and we're going to a Mariners game. We like baseball and we try to see a game when we're on vacation in another city. We've gone to baseball games in Boston, Chicago, Toronto, and even Seoul. Now we'll see a game on the other side of the Pacific Ocean. The Mariners are playing Tampa Bay so it'll be easy to cheer for the hometown team. Florida can suck it.
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That might have been the most fun baseball game I've ever attended, and I have been to a lot of baseball games. There's a lot of energy at T-Mobile Park and in the surrounding neighborhood. Sadly, the Mariners did not win but we got to sit in the shade and watch baseball and eat soft serve ice cream out of little plastic souvenir baseball helmets. We walked the two miles back to our hotel, passing through Pioneer Square, a wild neighborhood that reminds me of University City in Philadelphia when I lived there in the 80s. A 10/10 day.
It's 7 AM on Monday now and we're up and dressed and out in the world, at least two hours earlier than normal for a vacation day. We're on a mini passenger bus heading toward a YMCA near SeaTac airport, where our Mount Rainier tour is picking up its last two passengers. We're excited about this little expedition.
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Well Mount Rainier is just the most astonishing thing, and I'm so glad I got to see it. After a stop at Fred Mayer (about which I could write a whole page itself) to buy lunch and snacks, we arrived at the famous Mount Rainier National Park gate at about 1100. Our tour guide, Erika, is a serious outdoorswoman who has been to Rainier hundreds of times, beginning in her early childhood, and she drove the bus capably and fearlessly up the mountain roads. I wouldn't even want to drive my car in that park. We stopped at Longmire, an original park site that includes the Longmire Inn and a small visitors center and some bathrooms, all in the famous National Park architecture style - “parkitecture." Those buildings reminded me that National Parks are one of the greatest things about the United States.
We kept driving, and caught our first glimpse of Rainier, still capped with snow. Mount Rainier, I learned, is the snowiest place in America. Last year was a bad year, with under 500 feet of snow. In a typical year, 600 feet of snow falls on Mount Rainier. I can't even fathom this.
We finally reached Paradise, the most popular spot in the park. It is aptly named, with meadows full of wildflowers and incredible views of Rainier and the freshest, clearest air you can imagine. We hiked to Myrtle Falls, which would be a very easy little walk at sea level. But at 6000 feet, it's a legitimate hike. We saw a little black bear on a meadow high above the trail, so high that I almost wondered if I was seeing things. But everyone saw that bear, who didn't give us a second look. My sons, who took a more challenging hike up the mountain, also saw an elk and a marmot, who sat on a rock and chattered at the visitors.
We ate our picnic lunch at the Paradise Inn, an early 20th century rustic grand hotel that allows visitors to sit at tables in its beautiful old lobby and on its huge wraparound porch. I imagined wealthy families vacationing there 100 years ago and just for a moment, I thought about having been born too late. But my ancestors would not have been vacationing at the Paradise Inn. They'd have been cooking the food and cleaning the rooms and taking care of the grounds. I was born at exactly the right time.
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We arrived back in Seattle at 6 PM. That was the only night that we stayed in. I went swimming and then soaked in the hot tub and after a shower, I sat in my bed and read my book and watched TV for the rest of the evening. An altogether excellent day.
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That takes us to Tuesday. We finally made it to the Public Market, and just by happenstance, we ended up having lunch in the same restaurant where Tom Hanks and Rob Reiner had lunch in “Sleepless in Seattle.” The lunch was fine but the atmosphere and the view and the experience were outstanding. Just a lovely little place. I loved the Market with its artists and vendors and musicians and a guy who writes poems on an old Smith Corona typewriter - you give him a topic and he writes you a poem. I'd have asked for a poem on the topic of the year 2026, but there was already a long line of poem customers so I didn't get a poem.
We went to the Aquarium, which was OK. I don't like seeing wildlife in enclosures. But it was fine. Later, we took a sightseeing harbor cruise. The young tour guide, a Seattle native, was knowledgeable and funny and he seemed genuinely happy to tell us about his city. It was from him that I learned that Mount Rainier is only visible from Seattle about 90 days per year. “We say that the mountain is out," he said, “and we don't take it for granted." Neither did we.
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It's our last day in Seattle. I'm sitting next to two German ladies, waiting for the ferry back to Seattle from Bainbridge Island. When we got off the ferry, we were greeted by an older lady protesting the Trump administration, all by herself. A few of the hundreds of ferry passengers looked askance at her but most of us cheered and waved and smiled.
We were the first people in line for the return ferry to Seattle. After the last passenger disembarked, we started to board, until the German lady yelled at us for not waiting for the official order to begin boarding. As it turned out, she was right, but I took offense at her tone, which was martial to say the very least. But other than the order-barking Prussian military officer, it was a perfect ride. I love the Washington State ferry line. And Bainbridge Island is a lovely little place.
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And it was a lovely trip. We're on the plane now, in line for takeoff from Sea-Tac. It's 750 AM and we've been up since 430. I find that I like the early flights, even with the stupidly early wake up time. Boarding began at 640 for a 720 takeoff but I guess there's a lot of traffic today. It was misty early this morning, and even a little drizzly, but the sky is clearing now. Maybe we'll get one last look at Mount Rainier as we take off. Maybe the mountain is out today.
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It’s Friday now. I took today as a vacation day, and I’m so glad I did. There’s always so much to do after a trip, and it’s nice to have an extra day to catch up and organize things.
Right now, I’m sitting on my couch catching up with bill-paying and email; and of course, finishing this little chronicle of my week. Our flight home yesterday was very quick and despite a slight mishap (our driver, who had been told multiple times that our return flight would land at National and not at Dulles, still went to Dulles), we were home by 5 PM local time. I started unpacking and doing laundry immediately because if I’d sat down, I wouldn’t have gotten up. By 7:15, I was on my third load of laundry. I’d unpacked everything and put away my suitcases and I’d also dusted and vacuumed the house. After a short swimming break, I finished the laundry, cleaned the kitchen, and curled up in my pajamas with a cup of tea. It was nice to wake up to a clean house this morning.
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I didn’t feel well for most of the week. I'm not sick. I've just been in a lot of pain, and also not in a good place mentally. I hope to feel better soon. But I'm grateful that the pain and sadness didn’t stop me from enjoying a pretty wonderful trip. So long Seattle - it was my first visit but I hope it won’t be my last.
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