Vacation Day 1

Heather wakes me up at the ungodly time of 5:20 am, this is supposed to be vacation, why does this feel so much like work.We go to my parents house because my mom is taking me to the airport (thanks).It's really foggy down by the river at 6 in the morning.We checked and got our e-ticket, the lines were nice and short this early in the morning, one thing that is different than before, now you have to take your bags across the floor to the luggage screeners so they can peek at your underpants.We got through the security screening in no time, good thing they told us to be here two hours early, now I have two hours to kill, I don't like killing time that I could of spent sleeping.In wasting time I checked out some Bose noise canceling headphones at a kiosk in the air mall, woah, they really did their job with the noise canceling. Since they are bose of course they sound great too. They could of been mine for only $299. Woah, that's, expensive.Next we overpaid for some mediocre breakfast thingies from Au Bon Pain. There is nothing else to do until boarding so we sit around, fun fun fun. The plan boarded and took off on time yay!Shortly after we took off we were in the clouds so I couldn't see anything below, when it cleared up there was flat land, lots and lots of flat land, from Ohio till Montana, flat flat flat.We went back into the clouds this time and when we came out there were the rocky mountains, from 30 thousandish feet it was hard to tell how tall the first hills that I saw were, they didn't look too tall and maybe they weren't, but after 10 minutes there was no doubt that the rockies were underneath us. Big pointy peaks, but they were very very far down so I couldn't see much detail. The mountains lasted through western Montana, Idaho, and maybe eastern Washington.West of the rockies in Washington the land is mostly flat and brown, if I remember correctly this part of Washington qualifies for a desert. One interesting thing that I saw in this area is that the farms had a lot of circular crop fields instead of the square ones. Some of these round crops are really interesting because they are made up of different crops in wedges, so they looked like pie charts. I couldn't figure out why the round crops then it finally donned on me, the land is arid, all the crops need to be irrigated, and it must be more economical to irrigate the crops with a rotating arm sprinkler than to irrigate a square field.As we approached Seattle we flew over the cascade mountain range, this was the cooled part of the trip, we were at a lower altitude so the mountains looked great, this is when I started kicking myself for putting my camera in the overhead storage. The mountains very steep and rocky with snow scattered on the ridges. On the horizon outside my window was Mt Ranier poking up through the cloud tops, it was spectacular, and I didn't get a photo of it.We landed at 11:30 local time, 5 hour flight, 3 hours time difference. Everything went well here, we got our luggage and the ride to our hotel, it was funny, that the limo service guy couldn't find the hotel we drove around the same block 3 times while he was on the phone with his dispatcher. We were allowed to check in when we got there which was nice, not having to worry about them holding the baggage. When we got in the room the first thing I saw was the broadband port on the desk, so I just had to setup the laptop and hop online, I mean it's not everyday you can taunt your friends online from vacation in Seattle.After that we walked down to the Seattle Center, it is the area that has the Space Needle. We went on top of the space needle, the view was ok, but nothing great,I guess 520 feet was a lot cooler in 1962 ;) It was not worth the price of admission $26 for both of us was a little steep.Before you go up they snap your picture in front of a backdrop of the space needle and the Seattle Skyline. Who would want a portrait in front of a fake backdrop? Yeah? did I mention that a 5x7 was $12? Damn tourist trap.The main reason I went up there was so that I could see where Mt. Rainer was but it was too hazy to be able to see Mt Rainer, but I did get a picture, of a picture, of the Mountain, enjoy!After the space needle we walked down to the waterfront and had dinner at Anthony's Bell Street Diner (I think), I had a seafood salad with Crab, Shrimp, and avocado. Heather had Cod in a really tasty sauce. They have a house beer, brewed by tiny Scuttlebutt Brewing today it was a porter. This porter was fantastic! It was one of the best porters that I've tasted, it even holds it's own with Great Lakes Edmund FitzgeraldAfter dinner we took the trolly to the Pioneer Square it's part of the historical district of Seattle, There were a few things like the Firefighters memorial, waterfall garden, and the Klondike Gold Rush Museum. By this time we were pretty beat, so I shot some pictures and we hopped on a bus that brought us back to the hotel.Now I'm writing this, yay, I'm going to head down and see if I can locate any of the other beer cruisers that here staying here tonight.There will be some photos in the photoblog as well.