What I did on my summer vacation part 1: Seattle or Bust

With Independence Day behind us, most of us are in the full swing of summer. I had a slow June this year so we decided to make our summer vacation start as soon as the kids were out of school. We had ambitious plans of doing a west coast road trip but didn't want to drive the whole way. It's hard enough being in the same car with all three kids on short trips to Grandma's house, let alone a cross country adventure. So we shortened it some by flying to Seattle instead of driving. From there we rented a car and drove all along highway 101 and highway 1 down to L.A.

As a child I was fortunate enough to do a partial west coast trip with my parents but since I wasn't in control, there was a lot that was left off my wish list for sight seeing. So now that I'm in charge, I was able to choose our spots of interest. We started with Seattle, a city I've always wanted to visit and was very near as a child, but I still never got to see.

First glitch in the plans came when I arrived at the airport rental car place to find that the company I'd reserved a car with, Advantage, was shut down and out of business. The guy in the spot next to them said Thrifty had taken over all their reservations so we made our way across the way to the Thrifty area and were given a car -- at twice the cost of the one I'd reserved through Advantage. Doh! But the bigger Doh came moments later when I saw the car. I had asked for a "large" vehicle but what I got was not in my opinion, very large. The kids were cramped in the back and not happy about it. Mile one out of our 2,000 mile trek was just as difficult as the remaining 1,999 would be.

But we were in good spirits and excited to be there.

The first stop on our tour of the city was the underground tour to see the city's creepy remnants of the old underground city. That was beyond cool. Creepiness around every corner.



Then we went for a walk to see the oldest Starbucks and ran into some interesting areas along the way including this cool wall covered with gum. Thank you Roadside America app for telling me about that little treasure.



We ate dinner in a quaint little bohemian neighborhood and did some driving around some of Seattle's seedier areas, where I captured this thought-provoking image of some of the troubled people of the streets of the city.



The next day we drove up to Vancouver to get a little taste of Canadian life. I was bummed that I didn't realize until halfway through the day that this is the city where much of the X-Files was filmed. I would have totally been stalking out filming locations if I'd only planned ahead. But I swear I saw the sports stadium where Mulder met Deep Throat. I was really excited about that.

Our visit to the Seattle area only lasted two days. Sadly we had to move on if we wanted to get to L.A. in 10 days. There's so much to see along the way. The next morning we left for our Washington road trip and hit the land of the Twilight vampires. I'll talk about that tomorrow.

Lisa On Location Photography