We drove to Seattle with one goal on our minds - to go up into the Space Needle. After a few hours of driving, filled with magnificent views of Mount Saint Helen's and Mount Rainier, we arrived and politely told the proprietors to suck it, describing their prices as blasphemous. We opted instead to circle the bottom, getting some artistic shots of the relatively underwhelming structure. We began walking around the city, and after seeing the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation HQ, we hopped on the monorail to the downtown area.
That's when the day took a turn, in what direction, I'll leave you to decide.
Steve dusted off the old college tradition of taking 5 shots in 10 minutes. I said if we are going to get rowdy in Seattle, then we ought to do it properly, with 5 shots in no more than 5 minutes.
And so we made our way into a sketchy parking garage stairwell and did the deed.
The city of Seattle takes on a whole new beauty after splitting a bottle of vodka three ways. The sun setting over the Puget Sound was stunning enough for the engagement photos we drunkenly tried to crash.
The time consuming nature of our alcoholic shenanigans forced us to miss the local fish market, but we did manage to see the first ever Starbucks, which, for 3 non-coffee-drinkers, was moving. We found a local bar to continue binge drinking before stumbling into an Indian restaurant, to what can only have been the dismay of our waiter. To give you some insight into where we were at that point, let me just say that Steve had lost the ability to order for himself, yet still managed to tip the waiter twice.
We said goodbye to Seattle, which didn't even rain on us once, and headed toward Vancouver. After dumping all of our drugs, alcohol, and illegal immigrants, we crossed the border and made our way to the city. We checked into our hotel, and on the advice of our friendly Canadian hotel clerk, we dined on some Vietnamese food before renting two bikes for Dan and Steve so that I could try to keep up with them on my longboard through a beautiful park on the waterfront. We rode around for a few hours and then headed to Granville, a waterfront district whose warehouses have all been converted to shops, restaurants, and art galleries.
My memory of the rest of the night there is a little bit hazy. However, I can say with relative certainty that we drove up to a lookout of the city for some magnificent views. A passerby would have seen, in linear order, an Asian couple, another Asian couple, two more Asian couples, three white men, followed by three more Asian couples. We seemed to have stumbled on the Asian tourists' makeout point, but I like to think we added some flair to the ambiance.
The next morning we said our goodbyes to Vancouver and to Canada. Steve had the hardest time saying farewell, but we made it across the border with no international incidents.
We asked Mother Nature for permission to see Mount Saint Helen on our way back down to Portland, but our request was seemingly denied with a thick layer of fog. We battled through the sight-impairing conditions to the main lookout of the mountain and were rewarded with a panoramic view of the inside of a cloud. Having been defeated, we continued onward to Portland. It was well past sun down when we arrived at our gracious host, Yona's house.
After a good night filled with good cheer and hot tubs, we were reenergized for the rest of our trip down the Pacific Coast. We said our goodbyes and set off, with Yona's dog Zuke circling the car. When he continued to follow us out on the main road, we quickly drove him back and once again, took our leave, stopping only for one last taste of the Portland food trucks. We put Hotel California into our GPS and started flying down the Pacific Coast.
Flying might not be the best verb choice, seeing as it implies we made it to our destination in a timely fashion. I'm not sure if this is common knowledge, but the Pacific Coast is quite lengthy. One might argue, "Well Sean, there are only three states on that coast. The East Coast has more than four times that many states." Exactly, but here's the catch - the states out here are fucking enormous. I'm relatively certain Oregon could eat Rhode Island without anyone really noticing.
So suffice it to say, it took a while to get from Portland to our destination at Redwoods National Park. To be fair, we took a few stops, including one at a beach in Southern Oregon that appeared to be some sort of mass graveyard for unruly birds. It was quite unsettling. We also grabbed a bite to eat at a Subway Sandwich shop. I would like to give a bit of advice to our followers - do not ever go to a Subway on a Thursday evening, for they will be out of nearly everything. The poor gentlemen in line behind us grew so frustrated that he left, and we saw him later walking down the road to the local Taco Bell. We finally made it to the Redwoods, and with some minor difficulties, we found a campsite and passed out.
We woke the next morning to some oversized trees. They are like nature's version of novelty-sized collectibles, including but not limited to stuffed animals, foam fingers and cowboy hats. They were a touch more beautiful, though. We took a hike through the forest of giants, and before turning back, we each gave the largest tree we could find a hug, thanking it for doing such a good job at growing and making oxygen. Realizing our arms barely made it an eighth of the way around, we united for the triple hug, giving the tree the loving it deserved. With that, we headed back to the car to make the long drive down to San Francisco, literally driving through a tree trunk to do so. We are nothing if not persistent.
This post has been brought to you by big trees, shady Canucks and copious amounts of alcohol.
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