Seattle Part 1 of 2

Seattle is a cool town. It's basically Vancouver but smaller and more american. But I mean, the climate and what not. The game plan for the day was to walk to the Seattle Needle, where there are few museums, then head to Union Park, by Union Lake, and return to the hostel down Edwards trail. It almost worked out.

After continental breakfast (sidebar, continental breakfasts at hostels are weak) my first stop was Walgreens to pick up some Batteries and a Cherry coke. That went well, but the problems started there. I went in the front door and exited in the rear, or the opposite, it completely bamboozled my sense of direction. I was no longer able to picture myself on the Google Map that I looked at before starting my day. But I did still know which was way up, and that was helpful, because up was the direction of the Seattle Needle ... a spectacle in it's own worth. I hate tall things. I dislike the CN Tower, the Tour d'eiffel. Sears building was pretty cool actually, but other than that ... so I didn't go up it. But here are a couple of shots I took of it throughout the day.

See how it looks the same from every angle. Fascinating.

Next to that there is the Science Fiction Hall of Fame and a Music Museum. Sticking to my "Not spending money other than way too much on food" budget, I didn't go into either. But check out this freaky building. It's in several shots because my photography skills are lazy and poor.

I then looked at other things that required payed admission before leaving the area and heading for the coastal trail. Trouble started here.
You see, the trail was between the Railroads and the coast. To stop people from getting on the railroad, there was a big fence next to it, making the trail in view but absolutely not accessible. Weak. I was determined to get there, but there was no break in the fence in sight. Well ... whatever, I will head for the lake and double back later... right?
Well, disoriented, I forgot what the name of the street towards the lake was. Might not have been going the right direction to be honest. But I did find what appeared to be a park. Some woods anyway, and it advertised a view point and tennis courts.
I headed up through the woods where I was happy to see that Seattlenites had as little respect for the keep your dog on a leash rule as Frederictonians. It was a small park with a crappy tennis court and a mediocre view, but it was a decent detour.

Wait, no it wasn't it was a terrible detour. It brought me right into the middle of absolute nowhere. In some suburb on top of a mountain. Every road down was a dead end blocked off by roofs. Oh and as some of the pictures so far suggest, it did start raining at this point. I wouldn't say I was lost, I knew where I wanted to be, just no idea how to get there. I walked to six dead ends before finding a road, well off the beaten course, that got me down the hill.
But after that it was a simple walk back tot he trail, the one I wanted to be on an hour ago. Alas, I was there, time to start making my way back to the hostel, or at least back into town. The skyscrapers were pretty far away, I don't remember coming this far.

The walk on the sea line was nice. I like water, and seeing it out into it was pretty good.

I also ran into this elusive bastard.

Part two to follow.

Portland

Portland is pretty nice. I got off the train, exhausted, and went to the hostel to watch the Preds game online (followed by all other games that night)
Portland has the largest forest inside city limits in the United States. Woopti doo. I decided to check it out, went for a 5 hour hike, got lost (the maps were terribly messed up) got unlost and made it back to the hostel. Really a pretty uneventful day. The forest was really really nice, but my camera was out of batteries and I only got the chance to take one picture before it completely abandoned life.

Some Pictures from the Train Ride (LA - Portland)

29 hours on the train was a long long long time. But the scenery was quite nice.

When I woke up ... it was like being in a new world.

Ducks Game

First and foremost, the answer to the poll is Tootoo, I am surprised most of you guest that. Congrats.

Holy crap. Just the whole thing, unfriggen believable.
The crowd in Anaheim sucks. They really do, heck the two women next to me didn't show up again after the second period. Not like the tickets were cheap either. I really don't remember ordering the seats I got, but I ended up two rows from the ice, to the right of the net.

You couldn't have asked for a more exciting game. From Bobby Ryan's amazing breakaway goal to Weber's game tying last minute goal.

Midway through the second the two people behind me decided they had consumed enough alcohol to start dangling their Ducks towel over my head and 'accidentally' hitting me in the back of the neck with it while they randomly swung it.
When the preds tied the game at 2 – 2 I stood up and cheered only to get booed from the rest of my section. I particularly enjoyed that.
After Weber scored the goal with his goalie pulled I jumped out of chair looking for high fives, you know because it was overtime and we were getting our money's worth, but was given stares of hatred from the fellow hockey fans.
When the Predators won it a minute into overtime I knew it was a good time to keep my head down and get out of there with as little celebration as possible. The mumble and grumble of the crowd indicated their displeasure. I took the jersey off, for my own safety, once we left the rink but still some people saw it and yelled very pleasant obscenities at me.
Here is me and my home boy Head Coach Barry Trotz chilling before the game. No big. Just palling around.

I moved to their end for Warm up.

Once the game got going though, I went to my seat.

Flagstaff to Arizona (Hollywood in between)

After my last day at the Canyon I had a full day before I needed to catch my train to Anaheim. I caught the shuttle out of Williams bag to Flagstaff at 11 30, arriving at 12; a full 9 hours before my train. Fantastic. I took a 50 minute walk to the grocery store where I bought a variety of food to subsidize my depleting trail mix stash. When exiting the store some man wanted me to give him money because he loved Jesus. I did not comply.
I then purchased socks before walking back to the train station. I essentially spent the next 6 hours stealing wi-fi from various places (the train station, downtown, this cafe) before boarding the 12 hour train to Los Angeles. I sat next to Dave, an older man from Australia who I met a few days before on the shuttle. He was fantastic and helped with the increasing need for some social connections.

California is beautiful. It really is just a nice place. We arrived in LA at 8 AM.

I immediately went to Hollywood, where I found Hollywood Boulevard. I could catch the second leg of my journey at any time. Hollywood was decent but I question some of the people who get their stars there. I mean, Judge Judy? Come on now

Bugs Bunny isn't even a person …

John Garfield? No, his name is John Arbuckle and the Cat is Garfield. Come on Hollywood, get a friggen grip.

Frustrated, I bought some breakfast and sat down for a bit. As it got late, more and more costumes showed up on the street. Spiderman, the Hulk, Shrek, heck, even Woody from Toy Story showed up for a bit.

Before leaving the restaurant I thought that maybe I should check where my hotel was.
I don't think I am ever going to search with Google for hotels again. There were 40 some hotels between the train station and mine, but no, of course it won't suggest that one, instead it puts me a 50 minute walk away from the train station, and a 53 minute walk away from the Arena. For the sake of exercise I decided to walk there once I got off the train. It was a nice hotel, I'll give them that much.

On the way to the game, I thought it would be best to grab the city bus, I didn't want to be spotted alone in the streets with my Nashville Jersey. It was good Friday though, so of course a coherent bus schedule was out of the question. But within an hour and a half of the estimated arrival time of the bus, one showed up.

The way back from the game was worse. Thank goodness that Anaheimonians hate public transportation. The bus stop outside the Honda center, that is adjacent to the Angels stadium, where there was also a game, had 4 people waiting for a bus – all from Vancouver. We had a good chat up until the bus driver blew us off. He was polite enough to wave but not to stop. The next one was coming an hour later. Since we were all heading the same way we walked it off, adding a bit more exercise to my day.

Grand Canyon Day 2

Day two at the Canyon started with a lot of bad luck. Well no, it wasn't luck, it was my shuttle driver down right lying to me about the departure times of the shuttle and the train. I apparently had missed both and was to be snookered for my canyon visit for the day. The plan was to just head home to Flagstaff. But for no apparent reason they were running two trains to the Canyon, and I got there five minutes before boarding. What luck! I got tickets and headed onwards.

The train ride there provides some on ride "entertainment" including a crap guitarist, a crap fiddler, a crap mock train robbery and some crappy facts about random stuff around us. We saw deer though, that was okay.

The train only lets you stay four hours at the canyon because you have to make your connection back. Instead of heading down I decided to seek out the views across. I embarked on a 13 KM hike across the Rim.

This (the light brown running diagonally in the middle of the shot) is the path I walked down yesterday, from a different angle.

Some more scenic shots

It was at this point that some fat woman who had just stepped off a tour bus exclaimed "Wow look at those morons over there". I had no Idea what she was talking about, but I made it my mission to accomplish it. After a 2K walk I realized she was referring to a rock that stretched out over the canyon that people were climbing out on. Game time.

This is me at the point where people were being a moron, but not quite yet being a moron,

Here's a shot I took after of what the point looked like.

And here is what it looked like during

A little closer

Ah there!

And to top it off, one final shot of the whole adventure.

It was awesome, thoroughly enjoyed it, here are some final pics to top off the day. I head to Anaheim tomorrow night for game five of the Preds/Ducks series.