Tourist Season (in the Carl Hiassen sense)
Some old friends of mine from my Ohio State Marching Band days came through this way last week and left on a week’s cruise up to Alaska. They arrive back in Seattle this morning, and I volunteered to give them a Seattle tour. For as long as I’ve lived here, I really haven’t done any of the “normal” tourist things. What I usually do is not-so-fondly referred to by my relatives as “Camp Phil(2)bin”, involving walks, hikes, kayaking and maybe some partying.
One of the people in today’s group has had hip replacement surgery recently, however, and her walking range is limited to about a quarter of a mile. Suddenly, all the stuff I do and like to show people in Seattle is off the table, and I’m scrambling a little bit to find out what the “normal” tourists do. I looked up brunch at the Space Needle ($38.50/person - gaak!), Argosy cruises ($25), a surf-and-turf tour on one of those whacked-out amphibious “duck” vehicles ($23 - that might be reasonable). There’s always the Pike Place Market (flying fish, etc), but even that involves a bit of walking, and hill climbs. Then I have a sort of wild card - since they’re flying out of Portland tomorrow and have to get there tonight anyway, it might be cool to just head for Mount Rainier. The views today would be stunning. I don’t know how I can go there, though and not hike.
I’ll let you know what transpired. It’s gonna be a great day for picture-taking.
