Seattle

(Awesome way to christen our first morning waking up in our "new home": peering out to see a fawn nursing!)



We woke up a couple of hours outside of Seattle with the intent to head directly into the city, but found ourselves to be completely exhausted due to the rigorous travel schedule we’d both been on and the stress of the “would we or would we not both get back into the US?” question. So we putzed around the lovely area we had been advised to check out the night before, wandered around arts/crafts fair and got an awesome idea for how we might go about making a living in the future, and eventually got on our way.


(Roel could fit far more ice-cream in his top box than this couple did in their sidecar... future career possibility, but pretty sure Roel would consume the profits.)


(The view near Anacortes)

We’d met Matt from Touratech US back in Long Beach, CA and had kept in touch (partly because he had sent me on my way back then with a Touratech fuel can which has saved my rear a few times but mostly because he and his wife keep an awesome moto-travel blog (2wheels2weeks.com) and seem like a couple we’d like to catch up with on the road).


(Pike Place Fish Co.: A MUST SEE on Roel's Seattle Tourist List)

Being in Seattle, we stopped in to see Matt and he warmly offered to play host during our time in Seattle. So, what we had thought would be another city drive-through with a brief visit to see Matt, turned out to be an awesome weekend, spent like a normal 30-something couple, hanging out with friends with similar interests.


(Lucky us: it was Fleet Week!)
 
Sounds pretty run-of-the-mill for most people, probably, but for us, this was a real treat. Matt and his wife, Brayde, showed us the highlights of downtown Seattle, introduced us to their favorite local watering holes and found us a killer spot to watch the Blue Angels perform over the Seattle skyline (we were lucky to arrive during "Fleet Week").













They joined us for our journey as far as Mount Rainier National Park, and we’re hoping we get a chance to ride with them again on some leg of their upcoming journey to South America.


(Mt. Rainier National Park Blooms)


(Pesky clouds over Mt. Rainier)



We rode around Mount Rainier for a while and found a campsite shortly before dark along one of the incredibly twisty and scenic roads Matt had highlighted on the map for us.