Habs on the Road

Day 19

I started today waking up earlier than necessary, thinking, “I wonder if Lil’ Jon’s still has cinnamon rolls left. I bet if I leave now I can get some. But I’m so tired. I’ll sleep just a little longer and I bet they will still have some.” 30 minutes later, same thought, back to sleep. By 8:30am, I convinced myself I really need to go get some now or they will be gone for sure. Supposedly, they only make 12 per day on the weekend.

Day 20

More rain this morning, but it mostly died off this afternoon. We went to downtown Seattle so we could do the waterfront shops and Pike Place Market. We hit a massive Goodwill store in Seattle that was the size of a Walmart! I scored an old Nikonos camera, lens, and light meter, and an aluminum case all for $7.99 (going for over $200 on eBay)! I then found a brand new Dewalt 2 pack of batteries for $15 ($200 new). I also found a nice cordless Craftsman19.2V hammer drill for $15 (going for $60 on eBay). Carla found lots of good stuff for her booth also. We will be going back!

The next stop was REI…well…parking was terrible all around REI, and our Jeep was too tall to fit in their parking garage. Really frustrating!T

he homeless have overrun lots of Seattle and while trying to find a parking spot we got to watch a man go pee in the bushes.

So we had to miss REI. We then continued on toward the waterfront. Well,,,,parking is so terrible downtown. After lots of circling and doing u-turns, we finally found a spot 1/2 mile from the waterfront shops!

I didn’t get a photo, but it is crazy how many homeless tents are all over downtown. There are large groupings of them under most of the overpasses. Every time I saw one, I couldn’t grab my phone fast enough. Instead, here is a photo that I found online that is like what we saw all over, sometimes in huge groupings under I-5.

Between the trash, graffiti, homeless tents, smell of marijuana, and terrible parking (and constant drizzle), we really have no desire to go back downtown. We’ve done downtown so many times in the past, and it’s just not like it used to be. It’s the first time ever that the trashiness has killed the fun and excitement of being in Seattle. It’s really sad, because I used to love being here. They need a new mayor!

I can’t wait to get out into the wilderness, which we will be doing tomorrow when we go camping in the woods!

Day 21

We packed the Jeep and headed to Kachess Lake today to tent camp.

The drive down I-90 was sooo pretty!!

Day 22

Well…we didn’t sleep much at all last night! We tried one sleeping layout, but Avin couldn’t stretch out enough so we tried lining all four of us up side by side. That meant less room between each of us, which also wasn’t great, but was better. The mattress was too firm also and made our hips hurt (I bought a foam topper, but we didn’t have enough room to pack it in the truck so we left it back at home in Arkansas). We will have to fix the sleeping situation befor the next trip. Anyway, we got maybe 3 hours of sleep, and finally stayed up at 5:30am. I got a fire going. Avin got up a little while later, but Tripp snoozed on.

We were so tired we went back to sleep for a few hours. Tripp didn’t wake up until we finally got up the second time!

So the plan was to paddle along the shoreline until we found spot to pull off and eat a sun ack. The problem was the shoreline was steep and rocky, and we never found anything flat enough to pull up onto. so we turned around and started heading back. I really wish we had taken the time to put the skeg on each boat so they would track better. We were launching in a shallow area and I didn’t want it to drag on either boat and figured I would just put it on when we stopped for a snack, but that never happened.

With the rough night of sleep last night, along with the fact that we really did we set out to do, we decided to pack up and head back to the RV instead of suffering through another miserable night.

We made a stop near Bellevue Square at the store called Collectors Corner. We noticed they sell Pokémon cards and the kids love going in there. Within ate dinner at Ricardo‘s in Factoria Village. Really good Mexican food!

Day 23

It was sure nice to get a good nights rest in the RV! We slept in and then eat breakfast at Lil’ Jon’s.

We went back to the huge Goodwill in downtown Seattle. This time I was able to snap a few photos of the homeless tents everywhere. It is crazy how many there are all over downtown Seattle.

I made another attempt to go to REI, and this time I got lucky and found a parking spot. On our way out of the store, two police officers were escorting homeless people away who were asking for money as customers were leaving the store