Day 32

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Obfuscator writes: We woke up fairly early again, and hit the road, since we rarely have compelling reasons to stay in a designated campground area. Our gear had stayed nicely dry, and the night had been a lot warmer than we had anticipated. We had become rather accustomed to the mountains being very cold and windy, but for whatever reason, it wasn't that way here. Could be the tree density. It certainly cut down on wind.

We stopped at all sorts of turn-offs and snapped an awful lot of pictures on our way out of the park. The morning mist was pretty spectacular in a lot of the areas, and the weather patterns floating across the peaks was pretty amazing in others. Some of the coolest sights we saw were unfortunately the hardest to get because of alpine obstructions (read “trees”). After a while of driving like this, we got to Newhalem, a town in the National Park that is basically owned and built by Seattle City Lights. I guess all the hydroelectric dams and plants we saw in the range are owned by them, and provide a substantial part of the power to Seattle.

We took a bit of a backroad way into Seattle, rather than just cruising over to I-5 that would have run down the coast. It followed a winding river, and went through a couple of one-lane construction slowdowns. It was sort of a mixed blessing that way, since we got to see some little towns and good views, but it probably took longer. We also got stuck behind some really slow people with all the no-passing zones.

It was amusing to find that although we had basically sunny weather throughout the mountains, as soon as we entered Seattle's orbit, the weather turned cloudy, and gave way to light rain. Still, we followed our Uncle M's directions, and arrived safely at his house. He wasn't there, but we found him at his office, where we got a tour of that and his neighborhood, before a quality lunch down by the fishermen's wharf at a restaurant called Chinook's. It was quite tasty.

We were also introduced to his three dogs: one Pitbull, one Rottweiler, and one part Rottweiler mutt. All three are pretty large, and strong. The largest, Rex, is about 130 pounds. In other words, he's about my weight. We spent the afternoon talking to our uncle and his staff, and picked their brains for good ideas of things to see in Seattle. Later, we walked the three enormous dogs, had dinner, and relaxed.

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