Glacier to Seattle

We spent our last day in Glacier hiking along a beautiful trail high in the mountains. The views were huge and the conditions were quite epic (for us) with temps well below freezing and strong winds and snow. After several hours of walking on icy footpaths and with freezing digits, we made it back to the car alive and agreed we were ready to head on to our next destination.

We left Glacier close to dusk and had an enjoyable drive through the backroads of the Montana countryside, listening to NPR podcasts about Obama, and with the heater turned up full blast. We drove though the dark until we reached Spokane, Washington, where we spent the night in a seriously seedy motel.

An modest, 20ft tall, metal Bald Eagle sculpture, in northern Montana.

Early the next morning, touching as little as possible in the motel, we hit the road to Seattle. The drive took us across the flatlands of central Washington and up and over the Cascades, where we had a striking view of Mount Rainer. We arrived in Seattle at lunchtime and instantly liked it. It had a vibe much more akin to Berkeley or London than to any of the other strip-mall, chain-stall sprawlers we had been through recently. It was funky, and eclectic and looked like it would be a lot of fun to live in.

We were staying with an old friend, Ben Tobler, who is living in Seattle. It was great to see Ben and catch up. He and Rebecca had taken the day off work and that afteroon we had a highly entertaining walking tour of Seattle, including coffee shops, markets, architectural highlights and open-air sculpture (all fuelled by Seattle's finest brew), finishing off with a crab feast at Ben's place.

The next morning we walked down to one of Ben's favorite breakfast spots for crepes and coffee (so good!), said our goodbyes and headed for the ferry to take us across the Puget Sound to the Olympic Peninsula for the next leg of our trip.

on the ferry

The famous Seattle skyline with the Space needle (left) and ...

... a jetski hooligan with a shark-fin life-jacket. Nice.