South Park

Saturday morning I drove down to the Duwamish to see how the water would get. It was predicted to be one of the highest tides of the year and there was even a little event to celebrate, but as often happens, the tide arrived quite a bit lower than predicted.  I guess if you've got your hopes up for drama and disaster, this can be a bit anticlimactic, but for my part I just like being down on the shore at daybreak and it doesn't really matter if the bathtub is overflowing or not.

I also just like the South Park neighborhood, Seattle's largely unknown riverbank community of small homes and marine industries.  Thanks to the latter (and a small aviation company that set up decades ago on the other side of the river), its a bit of a mess, but they're slowly getting around to cleaning it up. In the meantime, there are some neat little parks and shoreline access spots being opened up.

Previous post:  March 2009

Chambers Bay

Our drive back from Lake Quinault on Monday began with a series of rain squalls, but by the time we got back to Puget Sound, the skies had cleared. We took the side trip through Steilacoom and then dropped down to the park at Chambers Bay, one of my favorite spots but one I hadn't dragged M to before. It was beautiful and pretty crowded, despite the chilly wind.

Our timing was good, since I understand they closed the parking lot this week in order to build a bigger one. They claim it's not because of the upcoming U.S. Open in June, although I suspect it makes the event easier to stage if they can keep the riff raff away from the park!

I've posted from here before:

  hshipman: Chamber's Creek: March 2013
  Gravel Beach: Pioneer: October 2010

If we had been here 90 minutes earlier, we might have looked over and seen the tornado that touched down south of Gig Harbor around 2PM!

Lake Quinault

Two years in a row does not make a routine, but it certainly makes a pattern. We took advantage of a special price to spend the long weekend at the Lake Quinault Lodge, just as we did last year at this time.

It rained a bunch. Is that a surprise? This is the rainy season on the marine side of a wet mountain range. We didn't go expecting sun. We went looking for a big lobby with comfy chairs to read in and a fireplace and a communal jigsaw puzzle. Food was a few steps away.

And like last year, they improvised with a couple of TVs in the ballroom so we (me and a couple dozen other fans, but not M) could watch the Seahawks beat the Packers (although that wasn't what we watched for most of the game).

Opera Alley

With a departure planned for late Saturday morning, we checked out lunch options in Tacoma and Olympia. And found Over the Moon on Opera Alley in downtown Tacoma, which was perfect.

Not only was lunch good, but the cafe is stocked astrological almanacs, which was entertaining. We learned that based on our birth dates, our relationship had been doomed from the start! Wish we'd known that when we met - here I had been thinking that the last thirty years had been pretty wonderful.

After lunch, I picked up coffee across the street at B-Sharp for the drive out to Lake Quinault.