Friday morning we made a bee line for Seattle Washington. Just had no idea what we were going to do when we go there but both boys wanted to see the Space Needle.
One of the things about traveling to Alaska is that we were pretty spoiled with having all the roads to ourselves. There were times we traveled almost two hours before seeing any other cars. Now we have to deal with this. Traffic all the way down, everywhere…
One of my personal highlights was touring the Boeing Aircraft manufacturing facility in Everett WA. I would like to show you pictures of the plant, but this was as close as we could get with a camera, or phone…
After the tour, we were taken inside a display gallery where cameras were allowed. I will have to admit, this was actually the first time I was able to understand how a jet engine really works.
They gave everyone an opportunity to sit in an actual cockpit, which was very cool. Except for the fact that the guy in front of us had to physically flip every single switch. There was a line forming including kids and several frustrated mom’s, so Mitch and I finally “convinced” him to get out. Then of all things, Mitch takes the pilot seat. Dork…
We did get to see a brand new unpainted 777 take off for initial flight testing. This one was sitting on the tarmac awaiting pickup by it’s new owner. $450 million and this baby could be yours.
Yep, there it is….
It’s not easy finding a parking place for a 33’ motor home in downtown Seattle but we were able to pull it off. We hung out at Pikes Market to enjoy some fresh seafood and I had the best Clam Chowder I had ever tasted.
This is something you don’t see every day, goats hanging out in a major city. A small company started offering goats to the city as a solution to keep the grass trimmed out in areas that are impossible to mow. When the grass is gone, they move simply them to the next spot. Genius.
Seattle is a lot like San Francisco, with huge hills and dips in the road. I removed the back storage grate off the back of the camper and the back end still drug, which scared the heck out of a woman that was standing at the corner. I ended up having to make a right turn at the next intersection and drove straight until we got out of the hills before I could head south.
We found a nice campground right on the bay and I spent the evening helping the guy next to me get his tail lights working again. He never came out to ask for help but I could tell he was struggling with it. He was pretty happy they were working again because he couldn’t stop thanking me when we were done.
Gear Head Corner
Back when I was prepping the camper for the trip, one of the things on my to-do list was to get the front end aligned. Because of the way the weight is distributed with the motor home, the factory frame settings didn’t quite work. We had to install special adjusters on ball joints to get everything evened out. It took the guy two more tries before he finally had everything squared away and she drove straight as an arrow down the road.
When we were going through the Yukon, they weren’t potholes exactly but there were some major depressions in the road. You couldn’t really see them until you got right up on them and not all of them were marked. There was a couple that we hit that just about brought the camper off the ground. I’m seeing now that the front end has a slight pull again so I’m guessing we knocked something out of whack. Oh well, he figured it out once he can figure it out again when we get back.
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