Raven's Roads
Living an interesting life: the travels and musings
of motorcycling author Linda R. Moore

Sep 12, 2004

September 11

Filed in Landmark-Hunting, Travel, Washington 2004

September 11

It rained like mad last night, and the power was out this morning. I also woke up at seven, and thus the morning seemed very long. Apparently some critter ran into the lines and expired both itself and the electrickery. :: sigh ::

I can’t remember if I mentioned that I had the huge honour of having Ariel sit by me at the computer yesterday and lick my hand. Well, I did.

When we were all ready, we headed down to the Farmer’s Market again and I treated everyone to lunch. We had Japanese stuff and I tried a couple of stir fry recipes. I won’t touch sushi, but that isn’t all of Japanese cuisine.

It was good. :-)

Then we headed north to Point Defiance park someplace north of Tacoma. The traffic was rather gnarly due to an accident, and it took us a bit of time. I got to hear about the bridge which had a resonant frequency and ended up being blown into the water a few months after it was built â€“ Galloping Gertie. And after it was described I remember seeing film of it on various shows about disasters and engineering and bad weather.

The park was beautiful. Some of it is manicured and some of it is virgin forest, which is glorious â€“ rows of green trees and fern. We went to the zoo to have a break from snarfing. It was a small zoo, and thus we were able to see all the critters without exhaustion. The raven’s cage was way too small and I was startled to see how big they really are. The other cages seemed okay and the animals happy enough. I was particularly impressed by the walrus, the giant Puget Sound fish tank and the gradated moon jellies â€“ from tiny polyps to their full, small size. The puffins were also fun because you could see them underwater, and so were the sea otters. They are singularly cute. And of course the penguins, but you couldn’t see them underwater.

After the zoo, we went to check out Fort Nisqually. This is a reconstruction of an early settlement with some original parts â€“ which were moved from elsewhere. It looked nifty, but it was quite late in the day, and it would take a bit more time to view it properly. I did buy some cool kid stuff in the shop though.

Last trip of the day was to the nearby railway museum â€“ not a museum of railways, but a logging camp station with huts and trains and all sorts of fun junk lying around. It kind of looked like someone had just left a bunch of stuff to rust where it had landed, and I liked that.

So that was Saturday. At home, the power was back on so I did my stuff and now I’m slowly winding down towards bed. LV has been measuring mascots and gadgetry up for my very own snarf bag, like hers. Penguin will soon have his own little pouch, and looks indescribably cute. I guess I will have to take pictures. ;-)