Michele Wilmonen

The Seattle Pacific Science Center, located at almost the foot of the Space Needle is a science filled adventure for everyone. As far as science centers or children's museums go, this is one of the largest ones I have been to. It has a number of permanent exhibits such as: animatronic dinosaurs, a small animal collection, water play, a tide pool, an insect exhibit with butterfly room and a human science exhibit. In addition to the permanent exhibits, they also offer visiting exhibits for people to enjoy. Just in the last year they hosted a Harry Potter exhibit and also a Star Wars exhibit. While we were there is was a Science of Fear exhibit. Their schedule and list of upcoming exhibits can be found on their website at http://www.pacificsciencecenter.org/. Tip: You can get into the ... read more

Because of my former fulltime job, my traveling was limited to the number of vacation hours that I had during the year. As most of you know from following my blog there is one destination that I would spend my precious vacation hours at, leaving no time to visit anywhere else. Now that I have switched careers and am writing, I can now visit and write about a larger range of destinations. At the end of June I was lucky enough to take my first road trip and headed to Western Washington. Today was spent driving to our destination and took us about 6 hours to get from Lewiston, Idaho to Olympia, Washington. Of course, there were stops along the way as I wanted to enjoy the sights and with a road trip getting there is ... read more

So the day after I quit my full time job I headed out to the Lower Granite Dam. Dams may not seem interesting to some of you, but have you ever visited one? While each dam of course is different, there is an abundance of interesting life around some of these dams. For Lower Granite, I was pleasantly surprise to find large numbers of pelicans. Yes, you read that correct, pelicans. We were cautious and kept our distance, but we did stop on the side of the road to watch them as I have never seen one outside of seeing them on TV. They were as skittish of us as we were with them. When we walked closer to the water they would swim further away from us even though there was already a good distance ... read more

After a disapointedly crowded Magic Morning (a special perk with some tickets that gets you into Disneyland an hour before gates open, but is limited to only certain sections of the park), we turned in our park hopper tickets for Annual Passes and headed from Disneyland to spend some time in California Adventure. As we walked to the back of the park to Paradise Pier, there was a long line of people at the recently finished Little Mermaid ride Ariel's Undersea Adventure that was not to officially open for another 4 days. What was going on? We just had to stop and ask. To our luck, they were having an Annual Passholder Sneak Preview for the ride. So before it officially opened, we got to join the very large crowd of annual passholders already in line ... read more

Due to construction, Disney moved its Southern California Halloween party from California Adventure over to Disneyland this year. I had decided the last time that we went that I was no longer going to attend the Halloween party when it was over at California Adventure as it was getting too crowded and we weren't having very much fun for the amount that we were paying for the tickets. But, since Disney decided to move the party to Disneyland this year, I decided to give it a go to see how it would be in another park. I am very glad that I did as it was so much more fun in Disneyland. There is just something about adding scary Halloween elements to the Magic Kingdom that make the party that much better. The whole trip had ... read more