October 25-27, 2015 Puyallup, Washington

We are now camped south of Seattle at Washington State  Fair grounds  in Puyallup, Washington. We are mostly visiting friends. The traffic here is so horrible that it puts a damper on sight seeing.

Last night we visited with Hal and Jan. Hal is my  friend that got me hooked up with the retired smokejumpers trail crews as a cook and a ski trip to Austria. Jan is his new lady friend, very cool lady. Jan cooked us dinner, it was fun to visit with them. Today we met Jennie and her husband Peter for a hike. John has been kayaking with Jennie for years. It was a 39 mile drive each way, it took three hours in the Seattle traffic.

 

We hiked on Cougar mountain. Very pretty place and a  fun hike. It rained the whole day, we are in the Pacific Northwest still.  After the hike we had lunch at a local brewpub. It was great to see them.

 

John got this beautiful  photo of sunrise in the fog before I got up. The coach at the Fairgrounds, in the fog with no nice sunrise colors. It is a large grassy lot with full hookups,  no bathrooms, right next to the fair grounds. 

We braved downtown Seattle to have lunch with some friends. It was foggy when we went into the city. We had  a 35 mile drive each way, also took 3 hours round trip. Downtown Seattle and the Space Needle in downtown.

 

We had lunch in Fisherman’s Terminal area. There were 100’s of huge commercial fishing boats. The Fisherman’s memorial statue on the pier is  a  35 feet tall bronze.

Packed with boats. We met for lunch at Chinooks a fabulous sea food restaurant right on the pier.

 

I could not resist, but the sinks in the bathroom at Chinooks were really cool.  In the front of the restaurant was Woods Fisheries. I like that Wood’s has certified wild seafood that is harvested locally with care.

  

We had lunch with our friends Doug and Robin . John has known them since they  all lived in Eagle, Colorado in the 70’s. Delicious lunch and it was fun to meet and  catch up with them. This is the view from our table, the sun came out while we were eating.

We visited Doug’s metal shop-The Tinman. He makes mostly copper and zinc  custom architectural pieces. Really nice shop with lots of cool tools. He is an artist with the metal.  On the long drive back we could see Mt Rainer outside the city.