Saturday - Day One - Washington Trip

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We started off on Saturday morning flying on Southwest to Seattle, which some people disdain as an airline beneath them, because you don't get a seat. But they are always on time and if you have kids under five you get to pre-board, so you get your first pick of seats. Not only that but Southwest has never fed you anything more than peanuts and a beverage, and now that all the other airlines have gone bankrupt and Southwest's menu is par for the course.

We flew out over Oakland I wondered if the tire marks on the a runway at the old retired Navy base is where some of my workmates "race" their Porsches.

You could also see Treasure Island where my grandfather was stationed in WWII prior to being shipped out over seas. You could even see Mount Diablo (the code name for our current release) as well as Briones where we like to hike as a family and I enjoy bike riding.

As we flew up the coat through Oregon and Washington there were several impressive peaks, I am not sure which this one is.

We passed by Crater Lake, another National Park we have not visited yet. And then we flew over Mt. Raineer and the three sisters in Washington

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Strangely when you fly into Seattle you fly north up Puget Sound past the airport then bank over the city and land approaching south at the airport. Our reservation at the cabin was not avalible till Sunday, so Saturday afternoon we made our way to our hotel reservation somewhere outside Olympic National Park. Our selection of where to stay was not very well informed. We had just chosen a town on Yahoo Map's that was along the way, and as fate would have it that town was Aberdeen. I thought it was interesting that as soon as they welcome you they tell you how to leave. A couple of additional notes, although we didn't stop ourselves. At a roadside farm there was a sign that read "Koo koo ka Choo, I am the Egg Man". Given it was Easter this was appropriate. Also just prior to entering Aberdeen there was a driveway to a house that advertized on a faded sign "Huge Starwars Shop".

We had made our reservation at one of the three or four hotels that Yahoo listed (the low hotel count should have been a huge clue), which while a Red Lion Inn, turned out to be just a little bit above "dive status." When we asked the lady at the counter what there was to do in Aberdeen she said, "Well, we have a Walmart and a bowling alley. Oh and there is a nice park down by the water front." We decided to head down there the kids enjoyed swinging.

We noticed as we walked along the river that there was a huge lumber processing plant across the river. Since this was our first trip to the Pacific Northwest it was not something that we were all that familar with, but that over the next several days on the Olympic Peninsula we would witness the second largest industry in Washingon much more viscerally.

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