Weekend Activities in Seattle

When we got back from Victoria, Tracy's girls were home from girls' camp, so that weekend it was time to play. On Saturday, we went with the whole family (minus my oldest nephew, who had to work) to go canoeing on Lake Washington. At the edge of the lake, there are lily pads all over and they've cut "trails" through them. So, you can head out in a canoe and cruise around through these "trails". It was pretty cool and gave us a little different perspective. There are floating bridges that take the highway over the lake, so we were canoeing right under the highway and we could see the cars buzzing by as we peacefully plied the waters amongst all of the lily pads. After we finished canoeing, we hiked around a little on the footpaths near the canoeing area.











Since we didn't have time to see the Locks on Saturday, we headed back to Seattle after church on Sunday so we could see them. The Locks create a passage between Lake Union and Puget Sound. We also checked out the Salmon Fish Ladder nearby. On the way to the locks, we passed this troll statue right under an overpass. Notice the VW Bug in his left hand:





Checking out the action at the locks

The Salmon Fish Ladder is a series of "steps" in the water which the fish jump up to go from the lower Puget Sound to the higher Lake Union. There is a viewing area where you can go down and see the fish underwater:



Though there were fish in the water, they weren't jumping up the ladder. Sad. They were jumping like crazy out on the lake, though. As we were leaving the locks, we stopped and watched the lake for about five or ten minutes and there were salmon jumping everywhere! I got some video of it, but it was on our HD video camera. I'm fairly certain that's a little too high-powered for Blogger, so I'm not even going to try to post it. If you really want to see it, just ask next time you come over. After the locks, Tracy and John took us to a park in Seattle which has an amazing view of the skyline:


I told you - Amazing!

After checking out the view, we discovered a little playground at the park with all of these spinning apparatuses. Apparently, Seattle kids like to make themselves dizzy. They literally had all of these things that you just climb on/in and you start spinning, really fast. Then you get really dizzy. Then you throw up. Okay, only Mark threw up. The rest of us stopped before we got to that point. These pictures don't do it justice because they all look like we're just sitting still and making weird poses. But, just imagine that we're all spinning and getting very, very dizzy.





A great way to spend the weekend. And with only one incidence of vomiting, we're already doing better than Sharon's family.

Next up, our little getaway to Bavaria and good times 4 wheelin'