Seattle
22:20 - Michael - Big Sky, MT
From San Francisco we headed north, spending a night in a random town along the way as the distance to Seattle was too large to cover in a single day. The following morning we stopped for an enjoyable brunch in Portland, a pleasant city that came highly recommended by various people we had encountered along our travels (apparently many people who go there end up staying forever).
We arrived in Seattle promptly on Tuesday as we knew our time in the city would be busy. We packed in an afternoon's tourism - the Space Needle, Experience Music Project and Sci-Fi Museum - before heading to Redmond to meet up with Josh, a friend of Michael's who works at Microsoft HQ. We enjoyed dinner in "Claim Jumper" at Michael's insistence, based on fond memories of the place from the school trip to Microsoft three years prior. Indeed none were disappointed - the huge portions kept even Alec happy for once. Josh's BMW parked outside, midway through a conversion into a track car, kept the conversation going for another hour in the car park (Josh reluctantly allowed Alec to take it sensibly around the car park), and plans were made for the following two days.
On the Wednesday, we headed first to Snowqualmie Falls, a local waterfall. We then met Josh at Microsoft, for an excellent lunch and an enjoyable tour of some of the Redmond campus (seemingly doubled in size since Michael's previous visit). Following this, we headed to a local private gun range, where for the second time on the trip, guns were fired. This time though, as well as a couple of handguns, we were able to use some more exotic weapons - an AK-47, and MP5, and an AR-15 with holographic sight (which Josh had made himself). That evening, we enjoyed an excellent steak in Ruth's Chris steak house in Bellevue, and we also dropped in on a Microsoft office in Bellevue which had the most fantastic views from its top floor café.
On Thursday, we met Josh up north in Everett at the Boeing plant, where we toured the huge factory (the largest building by volume in the world, which regularly had cloud formation and rainfall until preventative measures were taken). Following this, Josh had offered to take us on a flight into the local Cascade Mountains. With only three seats available, "tickets" had been decided by a highly tense coin flipping tournament at the falls the previous day, which unfortunately had resulted in Benji having to stay behind, although he nonetheless keenly helped Josh with the pre-flight checks. The two-hour flight, in a Cessna 182T with state-of-the-art G1000 glass cockpit, took us through some of the most beautiful scenery on the trip so far, and was thoroughly enjoyed by all. In the evening we returned to Bellevue to catch a film (the excellent Despicable Me which had us all laughing), and enjoyed our second Cheesecake Factory dinner.
We headed off Thursday morning, in disbelief that we were beginning the final, eastward, leg of our journey which would take us through Yellowstone and back towards Boston.
Photos from our flight:
