Clay's Last Full Day :(

Having Clay here for a full 10 days has been fantastic but it's almost over :(

In the meantime we tried to make the best of it and we got to see a lot of the city in his last day. It started with a drive to Discovery Park which is the largest park in Seattle and supposedly has beautiful cliffs to the ocean, a lighthouse, and a few miles of beaches where people can bonfire and stroll up and down the coast. We got to the visitors center but it had already closed so we took a quick peek at the map and off we drove through the forests...

"Dangit! Authorized vehicles only??" Funny thing you see... it turns out that a GA license plate does not qualify as authorized, so we tried a few other routes that were just as unsuccessful. Darn outdoor hippies! A pair of flipflops (thanks Eva!) and a looming sunset served as excuse enough to save the hikes for another day so we headed for the locks instead. We drove through the neighborhood of Ballard, and I must say, were it a little further east I think we could definitely move there - it's a quaint, understated area that seems to have a pretty young and relaxed vibe. Darn commute.

So on to the Ballard Locks - it's the first time either of us have been there and we were definitely impressed. Basically, these locks (imagine several huge boat elevators about 50 feet long and 20 feet wide) separate the Sound (on the map above it is the blue area on the left which goes out to the Pacific Ocean) from Lake Union and then Lake Washington (the blue area in the middle). The locks serve to control the water level on the lake side, but as a benefit (or perhaps on purpose?), it also keeps the salt water to the west and leaves all of the lakes freshwater - pretty cool! The picture on the right shows one of the lock doors closed and then when needed, it splits open from the middle closing the walls up and out to allow the water (and boats) to flow through to the next section. It's like a Ga Tech engineer's dream project :)

So the fun part was definitely seeing how the locks work and watching several boats pass through, but I must admit that I felt a little bad for Clay - what a tease I am! I show him all the water the city has to offer, boats EVERYWHERE, fish hopping up left and right....and not a boat or fishing pole for him in sight! Sorry Clay - give me time at MS and hopefully I'll eventually be able to buy you what you want and deserve ;)

To continue the trip through the city, we went through Fremont (showed him the famous troll) and its neighbor Wallingford, then back across the Fremont Bridge to Seattle. Just south of the locks and the bridge I showed him what houseboat living was like in the NW. If you're like DJ then you're picturing one of the huge "trailers on the water" that are so abundant in Lake Lanier sailing all over the lake and docking when done. Not so up here... Not sure which is higher class and which is lower, but the "houseboats" up here are still on the water, they just look more like houses and are completely stationary (perhaps "dockhouses" would be a more descriptive name - think "Sleepless in Seattle"). It took awhile for Clay to understand what he was seeing, but then it clicked: "These people actually live ON the water, can have boats tied up to their HOUSES, AND can fish RIGHT OFF their front porch???" I think he was in love.

Well...that is... until we spotted the sign warning about excess sewage draining in the case of high water levels.

Yikes. Back to land-living we go....