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Archive for September, 2009
New Home
Sep 27
Today we moved into our new home in park Ridge, just four days short of four months from our leaving Evanston on June 1 and a month exactly after we returned to the Chicago area. That last month we spent in hotels, and averaged $39 a night with all taxes and fees. Now comes the chore of unpacking and setting up a new home.
Seattle’s Market
Sep 20
I’d heard for years about the Pike Place Market in downtown Seattle. Some say it is the finest and biggest market in the U.S. It truly is big with a large variety of food and other products for sale. It is hard for me to estimate how large it really is but I would say the various indoor and outdoor areas all together was the size of a shopping mall or three city blocks.
We went on a Sunday, prime day for the market, and the place was packed. There was seafood in abundance, mostly shellfish, and good produce to be had, though not much of it was organic. Particularly striking though were the flower vendors. Four very large flower stands were selling the most incredible bouquets. Thousands of flowers were on display that would rival an arboretum.
Across the street from the main market building is the original Starbucks, which seems like it was a nice place with no hint of the megalomaniacal attempts at world domination to come. The rest of downtown Seattle is a typical downtown, nothing bad but nothing special. The restaurants all seemed to be overpriced. The Pikes Place Market is the place to go though.
Elephant Seals
Sep 15
Near San Simeon, California is a Pacific Ocean beach where elephant seals have chosen to live. You can pull off the Pacific Coast Highway and watch these beasts like we did. They are beasts, even if they mostly just lie around when they are on land. Male elephant seals reach a length of 16 ft (5 m) and a weight of 6,000 lb (2,700 kg) and are much larger than the females sized about 10 ft (3 m) and 2,000 lb (900 kg).
Elephant seals are air-breathing mammals who sleep on land and sun themselves a few hours each day. You could say that watching them is not terribly exciting, but to be able to be within a few meters of these animals and watch them, even if they are just sleeping, is a memorable experience.
The Redwoods
Sep 14
While we wait to get approval for our new home, I will begin posting more about our adventures.
One of the wonderful things we had a chance to experience was the California redwood trees. There are several wonderful state and national parks devoted to saving old-growth redwood forests. We went to two–Humboldt State Park and Redwoods National Park. The photos cannot at all capture the true majesty of these trees. You have to be there and walk among them to truly feel their size and age. Even the medium size ones are twenty stories tall and many of the trees are over a thousand years old.
Paula has not forgiven me yet for my knee-jerk rejection of the chance to spend $5 to drive through a redwood tree. I sincerely thought a free drive-through redwood experience could be had, but if it can be had, we did not find it. I regret not being able to drive through a tree, even f it is a tacky tourist thing to do.
