Laurel Fan

We stayed with Frank Sanders at the Devil’s Tower Lodge, and spent four days climbing there.

We went to the top twice via El Cracko Diablo and the Durrance Route. We also did some cragging at the Southwest Shoulder and Teacher’s Lounge areas.

I’m not a giant-piece-of-bread-with-very-little-salumi person, so when I go I usually get a cold or hot meat plate instead of a sandwich. It comes with a bit of baguette so you can choose your own meat/bread ratio, and there’s always more than enough to take home for a second lunch or a pre-dinner snack.

Best coffee on I-90 between Seattle and the Columbia River.

About 4 years ago before the place had a website and when there weren’t 2^n restaurant review sites, a picture that I took there was the first search result for “Guu with Garlic”.

This is one of the newest of the Smithsonians, and it shows.
They avoid the problem of an overwhelming display case of contextless stuff by designing the artifact displays almost like a web page. The main display cases are pretty compact, with plenty of “related links” are laid out in a drawer underneath. The drawers are easy to miss though—the only reason I realized they could be opened was that some of them said “drawer locked do not open”, so I opened another one.

The “Our Lives” was a very high tech exhibit about modern native americans. It goes beyond and fleshes out the white-man-messed-this-place-up storyline (but of course there is quite a bit of white-man-messing-up) by exploring the modern life of several different tribes and their answers and responses of assimilation/separatism/etc. It’s designed as a series of half-open rooms, so each of the different tribes has a separate area, but you can hear and catch sight of the neighboring ones, which seems to me to be adapted to a very modern way of focusing attention.

Oh, and the food is great too, and the cafeteria is on the first floor. I think that’s highly appropriate, since in US urban areas, food is often the easiest way to learn about different cultures.

Bike route from Cap Hill:

• S on 12th Ave through First Hill and I-D/Little Saigon
• stay right at the light after the bridge to stay on 12th
• turn left on Hill St (have to, 12th ends)
• turn right on 14th Ave
• 14th Ave kind of turns into Beacon Ave S, get on Beacon Ave S
• go past the golf course and turn left on Columbian
• down the hill on Columbian (it turns into Alaska), cross MLK
• right before Rainier Ave is the cultural center, can turn into their parking lot and access Columbia Park to avoid Rainier Ave. I had to walk my bike because there were literally babies crawling all over the park.

Best farmer’s market I’ve been to in Seattle, but one of the more crowded, especially right after people get off work. Usual stops: Tonnemaker’s for peaches, Alm Hill for berries, Patty Pan grill for grilled vegetables (line can be kind of long, so I skipped it last week since I needed to go home), Loki for smoked salmon bellies, and St Jude’s for tuna. I have more than enough vegetables to deal with from my CSA, but sometimes I stop by Alvarez to get some of the sunny side stuff like peppers and asparagus.

I haven’t been to the actual zoo, but the parking lot is a great deal for parking for Waikiki. 25 cents an hour, maximum of 4 hours.

We met a lot of interesting people on the trail, like Bill the semi permanently installed camp maintainer at Mile 8.

Tip: bring duct tape. I used up almost all of my mini roll by helping a few people we met whose boots were falling apart, and to secure blister treatment for one of my friends.

Go early in the day. We went in the afternoon and most of the open air markets were already closing up.