Seattle Subculture Tour

Our first day in Seattle today and we managed to cram a lot in (and I’m not just talking about the complimentary breakfast).

This morning started with a trip to the Seattle Center , a park and arts centre built for the 1962 “Century 21 Exposition”, which is home to the Space Needle (which we have’t been up yet, we’re saving it).

It’s also home to the EMP, “Experience Music Project” which, strangely, is both a music museum and a science fiction museum in one. The music section is home to exhibits about Seattle’s most famous exports (except maybe Microsoft), Nirvana and Jimi Hendrix and the science fiction museum is currently holding an interactive exhibit about Avatar. Strange combination but it kind of worked. The music lab also contained a lot of interactive exhibits and mini recording studios. I tried to teach Jen how to play the guitar but it wasn’t really working, not least because I don’t really know how to play the guitar.

Anyway, we then walked down to Seattle’s famous Pike Place Market , an indoor and outdoor farmers market since 1907. Alongside the fish and flower markets there’s an awful lot of tourist tat shops. It was interesting but we didn’t stay long.

In the afternoon we’d booked ourself onto the “Seattle Subculture Tour” , a bus tour taking in all the important “alternative” sites in Seattle. It was a really fun tour, although it wasn’t exactly on brief. It was pretty much a standard tour of the main sights in Seattle but there were only 4 of us booked on the bus so we pretty much got a personal tour with the guide. The tour stopped at Kurt Cobain’s house as well as “Kurt’s Bench” which has become a shrine to him over the years. We also got to hop off the bus and get some great views of Lake Washington, Bill Gate’s house (from a long way away!), Chinatown and Mount Ranier , which dominates the skyline wherever you are in Seattle, but looks great over the lake.

By the way, for any fans of Soundgarden out there, the monument Jen is leaning against in the photo is called the “Black Hole Sun”, which has a fairly famous song named after it .

 

 

Paddle & Saddle

We spent our last day in Yellowstone doing a “Paddle and Saddle” day with The Flying Pig   Rafting Company. A horse back trail ride in the morning and white water rafting in the afternoon.

I haven’t ridden a horse or rafted before and Jen has only ridden a horse a few time. Luckily, they were both pretty tame.

The trail ride was a slow trek through some amazing countryside. I think they put us on really old horses who were incapable of bolting even if they’d wanted to. Mine seemed more interested in stopping to eat some flowers every couple of minutes than misbehaving itself.

In the afternoon we got to have a go at white water rafting on the Yellowstone river. Again, it was fairly slow, which suited me fine. I’d chosen not to wear a wetsuit because I didn’t realise how cold the water was going to be so I’m fairly glad I didn’t leave the raft. Jen was wearing a wetsuit though and seemed happy to jump off the raft and swim about. I promise I didn’t push her…

I’m going to miss Yellowstone but I’m sure we’ll come back. I’ve been bitten by every insect in the park and the rafting has given me pain in back muscles I didn’t know I had, but it was well worth it.

Tonight we’re in Spokane in Washington and hopefully by tomorrow night we’ll be in Seattle .

 

Yellowstone Safari

Yesterday was our third day in Yellowstone Park and we were booked onto a private guided tour with Safari Yellowstone .

Most of the wildlife in the park wakes up at an ungodly hour, which meant that we had to too. Our guide picked us up from our motel at 5:45 and we headed into the north end of the park.

The light at sunrise makes for some great photo opportunities and during the first couple of hours we saw deer, elk, pronghorn, lots of bison and thanks to the supplied binoculars and spotting scopes we were able to watch an osprey nest from afar. We watched for about half an hour as the mother looked after her two chicks and kept lookout while she waited for the male to return.

Our guide said that normally he would take guests up to a mountain lake to watch the otters that were usually around at this time of year but it was a bit of a hike and he hadn’t seen them so far this year so he decided to push on and try to find us a grizzly bear.

We didn’t have to drive far. The traffic jam after a couple of miles gave away the fact that there was an adult grizzly about 150 away from the side of the road. That’s a fair distance but as you can see below I managed to get a few photos. They’re fairly low quality because I was on maximum zoom but I wouldn’t have wanted to get any closer,our guide said the bear could cover that distance in under 10 seconds!

The hardest animals to spot in Yellowstone are the wolves. They were reintroduced into the park in 1995 and there are only around 120 in a park covering over 2 million acres. Add to this the fact that they don’t like humans and tend to stay away from the roads and you’ll understand why sightings are rare. Our guide took us to a few spots where they tend to hang out and managed to speak to one of the foremost wolf biologists in the park but it was looking unlikely. There had been sightings that morning and lots of people were waiting for one in particular to return but we could have spent our whole tour waiting so we decided to push on and see some more of the park.

After a picnic lunch by the river we saw some mountain goats (from over half a mile away so no photos) and ground squirrels, which are kind of a cross between grey squirrels and meerkats.

So, the tour was over and we were on our way back towards our Motel when our guide spotted his boss in a lay-by and pulled over to get some info. It turns out that his boss had been up to the trout lake where the otters hang out and they were back! The guide swung the car round and drove us back to the foot of the trail. We hiked up the short (but steep) trail to the mountain lake and sure enough we found 3 otters swimming and fishing by the side of the lake. We followed them around the lake for half an hour or so and managed to get some nice photos of them playing and eating lunch.

Unfortunately our time was up and after nine hours, which seemed like about one, we headed back to our motel. We won’t be forgetting today in a hurry.

 

Old Faithful

We’re not supposed to be doing our proper Yellowstone safari tour until Tuesday but our drive from Cody to our lodging in Gardiner, Montana (just by the north Yellowstone Park gate) today took us right through the centre of Yellowstone and we took a short detour to see Old Faithful . We’ve got three more days here to explore further but here’s a few photos we took today.

The last few are of our motel and the view from our patio.

 

 

 

Buffalo Bill Museum and Cody Stampede Rodeo

Thanks to our quick sprint from Chicago we had an extra day in Cody, Wyoming today, named after William Frederick “Buffalo Bill” Cody . We’re in the heart of cowboy country and today couldn’t have been more “yeee-haawww” if we’d tried.

We started out at the Old Trail Town , a re-creation frontier town in Cody which has been recreated from historic buildings and artifacts, dismantled, transported from their original locations and painstakingly rebuilt here. Really impressive.

Next we moved onto the Buffalo Bill Historic Centre which was a huge museum (actually 5 museums in 1), considering the small town it’s in. We had time to check out the Buffalo Bill exhibition and the Yellowstone exhibition. Unfortunately we didn’t have time to see the American Indian, Western Art or “Firearms” exhibitions because we had to get to dinner.

For dinner we’d checked ourselves into a “Chuck Wagon” dinner with a live show . A “Chuck Wagon” dinner seems to be another excuse for Americans to serve you as much meat as you can possibly eat, basically a self-service, all you can eat indoor barbecue where you can “add steak for $6” (classy!) We were treated to an hour of country and western music while we duly ate as much as we could.

The day finished with at the Cody Nite Rodeo . I wasn’t sure what exactly to expect but it was great. There were some genuinely impressive moments, including some scary looking bull riding, cattle roping and some incredible gymnastics (they may look like they’re falling off in the photos but they’re not).

Tomorrow we continue to Yellowstone.

Mount Rushmore and Crazy Horse Memorials

Our plan was to drive from Chicago to Yellowstone over 4 days, staying in Fairmont, Rapid City, Buffalo and then Cody on the way. Once we got on the road though, we realised that they were a lot more empty than we thought and that we may as well drive into the night to get to Yellowstone faster.

So, we drove 900 miles on Thursday (14 hours!) and made it all the way to Rapid City on the first night, then nearly 500 miles yesterday via Mount Rushmore straight to Cody, which means we get an extra night in Cody and an extra night in Yellowstone!

Anyway, just outside Radid City we stopped at Mount Rushmore , which was fairly impressive and makes for some good cheesy photos.

Much more interesting however was the Crazy Horse Memorial being built 20 miles down the road in the middle of Black Hills National Forest . It was commissioned in 1948 by the Lakota Indians to serve as a permanent memorial to Crazy Horse . It was originally being sculpted by one man, Korczak Ziółkowski , until he died in 1982 and his sons and daughters took over. It’s a long way from being finished, they’ve only made it as far as his face and arm so far but it’ll get there eventually.

Whilst Mount Rushmore is a government funded memorial, built quickly as a tourist attraction to bring people to South Dakota, the Crazy Horse memorial is a labour of love, which has real meaning for the tribes still living in Black Hills. It’s also going to be 6 times as big as Mount Rushmore.

We then had an incredible trip to Cody, right through the middle of Bighorn National Forest (scene of the Battle of Little Bighorn), driving straight across part of the Rocky Mountain Range . I’ve tried to capture some of the landscapes as we drove up the steep mountain path overlooking the prairies but somehow it doesn’t really translate in 2D. I’ll try to do better in Yellowstone.

Gangster Tours, Millenium Park and Fireworks

We had another fantastic day in Chicago today.

We started with a tour of Chicago’s gangster history with “Untouchable Tours” . Our excellent (and genuinely hilarious) tour guide talked to us about some of Chicago’s more famous mobsters such as Al Capone and John Dillinger whilst showing us some of the sights like the scene of the St. Valentines day massacre and some of their favourite hangouts in Little Italy and Downtown.

We then took a walk back through millenium park (finished 4 years late in 2004!) and got some good photos of the Cloud Gate (or “the bean” as the locals call it).

To complete our trip to Chicago we finished the night with a speedboat fireworks cruise. We were treated to a bit of Guns ‘n’ Roses as we bumped and splashed across the waves before the boat bought us back and stopped about 100m off of Navy Pier for us to watch the fireworks.

I’m going to miss Chicago, but we’re off on a cross-country trip tomorrow towards Yellowstone Park. It’s going to take us a few days to get there and we don’t have any hotels booked along the way so this is where the road trip starts in earnest. We’ll probably update the blog in a few days when we get there.

 

Hancock Observatory and Architecure Boat Tour

Today was a busy day (comparatively, I suppose).

We started by taking an architecture boat tour around the Chicago river . Chicago is the birthplace of the skyscraper and as you’ll see from the photos below, it’s full of them.

From the river we were able to see and learn about all of Chicago’s most famous buildings, including the Willis Tower (formerly the Sears Tower), the Trump Tower and the John Hancock Center .

Speaking of which, our next stop was the observatory at the top of the Hancock Center on the 94th floor . Apparently on a clear day you can see 4 states from the top of the tower, but it was getting a little bit cloudy by the time we got there and the light was fading. Still, we managed to get some pretty good shots of the skyline while we were up there.

We finished off the day with a trip to my favourite tacky American chain restaurant, “The Cheesecake Factory” . It’s not exactly upmarket but the cheesecake is amazing (I had the Reese’s Peanut Butter cake).

 

First Night in Chicago

We’ve arrived in Chicago and thought we’d spend our first night at Navy Pier .

It’s pretty much exactly as you’d expect, like a much bigger version of Brighton Pier, with an Imax cinema, theatre, ferris wheel etc. Very touristy, but we’re tourists.

Chicago is a beautiful city at night, the lights in the hundreds of skyscrapers really light up the sky. We’re here for 3 nights so hopefully I’ll get some better photos of the skyline before we leave.

Motown Museum, Detroit

Detroit is famous for 2 things; cars and music.

Detroit = The Motor City = Motown

From the window of our hotel we could see the Ford building and the Ford test track below. We were also just a few minutes from the Henry T Ford Museum, but we only had one morning and I’d put Detroit on the itinerary for one reason only and that was to visit the Motown Museum.

The Motown Museum is no ordinary museum, full of glass cabinets and exhibits (althouth there are some). The Museum is built inside the small residential property which housed Tamla Motown records during their busiest years and was mostly set out just like it was in the 60’s and 70’s.

Berry Gordy bought the property in 1959 and it was both his home, a recording studio, headquarters, distribution hub and artist development centre. We got to stand (and sing, badly) in the original Studio A where artists like Stevie Wonder, The Jackson 5, Marvin Gaye, Diana Ross, The Temptations, Gladys Knight, Smokey Robinson (the list goes on…) recorded their biggest hits. We also got to see how Motown really was a small cottage industry, run from a small property where everybody chipped in (the artists would pack boxes when they weren’t recording and Diana Ross sat on the front desk answering the phones when she first got there).

I think my favourite story from our (excellent) tour guide was about the candy machine in the lobby. Apparently the Baby Ruth bars were always kept in the 4th slot from the right hand side and whoever filled it was told they MUST make sure the Baby Ruth bars were 4th from the right. This was because Baby Ruth bars were Stevie Wonder’s favourite and he could only find them by hitting the 4th button from the right 🙂

Unfortunately, no photos are allowed in the museum but you get a sense of how small it is from the few photos I got of the outside.