This weekend was supposed to be our "outdoor" weekend, where we hike, or mountain climb or bike. But a spool of cable in the middle of the road when I came around the corner on my motorcycle on the way home yesterday dictated other plans. I'm OK, but I skidded a little with my leg trapped under the bike, so hiking isn't in the plans for a while.

 

So I compromised and we went to the Woodland Park Zoo. It was "outdoors" but it had lots of places for me to rest the leg. I'm not normally much of a "zoo guy". I like my animals out in the wild, but I have to say that this zoo is really well done. It's a modern place, where the animals are in large areas in habitats similar to their own, with visitors on the fringes. The layout is so well done that the animals have a lot of room to roam and yet we got a lot of vantage points to see them.

 

They have it arranged into about 8 or 9 different habitats. I really liked the rainforest, which was for the most part enclosed. I liked it mostly for the really neat exhibits, but partly because it was warm! It felt a lot like Florida in there.

 

This is also a "working zoo", which means they take in sick animals and then set them free in their native countries when they are well. They also have a "rebreeding" program, where they breed endangered animals and then send them to their native environments. They also had really great presentations all day long.

 

Hoepfully I'll be healed up enough next week to get out to our regular hike.

This weekend we took off for Seattle City Center and the Pacific Science Center. This is an awesome place, with hundreds of exhibits from children's hands-on to very scientific studies. Once we got into the biological building we stopped and Christina got to be part of a presentation! The presenter had a series of demonstrations of optical illusions. He put some special glasses on Christina that offset her vision by about 20 degrees. He then threw her stuff to catch (she didn't), tried to shake her hand, and generally confused her. Christina and the rest of us could barely stop laughing.

 

After looking at a few exhibits, we left and went to the food pavilion in Seattle City Center, where they are having an "around the world" series. This weekend it was Italy, and they were having a Bocce Ball contest while we ate. We went back to the Science Center and watched an Imax movie about cowbows around the world. It's facinating to watch the chivalric paradigm move from Morroco to Spain, then to Mexico and Argentena, and all the way up from the American southwest to the north of Canada. Really interesting stuff.

 

But the big presentation was the Dead Sea Scrolls. They have an awesome exhibit that you have to reserve a place for, where they show the fragments of the scrolls and other artifacts from the caves in Jordan. We spent over three hours seeing everything, and it was awe-inspiring. I never knew the kinds of things that were in the scrolls - I thought it was mostly some of the books from the Old Testament in the Bible. But in fact the scrolls are a lot more. They have commentaries, social documents, even a treasure map! It was a lot of fun. They are only being displayed at four or five places in the US, so if you get a chance, make sure you see them. 

We've been getting "typical" Seattle weather lately, with rain all week. It doesn't rain here like it does in Florida - there it rains furiously for an hour or so and then it gets so hot and muggy your teeth sweat. Here it rains in what Floridians call a "sprinkle" or "shower", but it goes on for a long time. It's also much colder 

 

But Saturday dawned crisp and clear. We packed up the Marjorie-Mobile and headed out to Tiger Mountain, which is part of the Cascade Range of mountains dubbed the "Issaquah Alps". Issaquah is a small town between Tiger and Squak mountains, with Lake Sammamish across I-90 to the north, and Covington where we live to the South.

 

We chose the south-west entrance because it's closest to us, it's the least crowded, and it also happens to be where the paragliders and hang gliders launch. We entered the forest at the base, and it felt like we'd gone back to the Jurassic - very dark, gloriously green and fern-filled. Very soon the trail turned into "nature's stairmaster" and we had to take a break or two to catch our breath. At least we're getting into shape!

 

About an hour into the hike the switchbacks of trails turned tan as the evergreens shedded their old needles, and it smelled like Christmas. In another hour we finally reached the first summit where the paragliders launch. These are specially designed parachutes that allow the pilots to fly forward, and also catch the thermal currents from the sun-washed valley below. The view was really spectacular, so we stopped and had a picnic of olives, french bread, cheese, ham and fruit.

 

From there we hiked another few minutes a little higher to the other side of the summit, where you can see from the city of Issaquah and Lake Sammamish all the way to Seattle. This is where the hang gliders launch, so we stopped and talked to one of them before he took off.

Coming down is a lot faster than going up, but still took us an hour or so. Once we got back down into the valley, we went to the old section of Issaquah and found an incredible little Medeterranian restaurant. We ordered "family style", and tried several dishes.

Well, all the Grannies have gone, and we had a busy week with the beginning of school. Christina really likes her new school and has lots of friends already.

 

Each weekend we normally alternate between a city and country event. This weekend we did both!  We started out in Seattle by visiting the "Public Market", where I picked up some hot sauces for red beans and rice, a dish I made for the Sunday - more about that in a minute. While we were in Seattle, we visited the Seattle Aquarium. It was a lot of fun, especially for Christina. She wants to be a veteranarian when she grows up, so she loves the science part of visiting zoos and aquariums. It's interesting to visit a Northwest aquarium after we've visited several in Florida.

 

After the market and the aquarium, we had an amazing Italian lunch in Post Alley. We then marched down to Pioneer Square, an older area of Southern Seattle, to my favorite bookstore: The Elliot Bay Book Company. This place is gorgeous - more books than a modern book-mart, and in a beatuiful old brick building with lots of nooks and crannies on every floor. I could spend all day in there. We ended the day in a town called Bellevue, where we ate at a Sushi place where the plates come by on a conveyor belt. It was a lot of fun picking the dishes off as they swirled by.

 

After church on Sunday, we headed out to Woodinville, where we went to a "shrimp boil, end of summer bash" at a friend's house. Well, us and 225 other people. The host flew in Andouille sausage from New Orleans, and I made up some red beans and rice. It's quite an event, with clowns, face-painting, a band, and more food and good company than we've had in a long time.

 

Whew - back to work in the morning!