To the capital: Seattle, Day 6 (10 July 2017)

Today was both our second daytrip out of Seattle, and second meet-up of the holiday (to date). As you’ve probably guessed from this post’s title, our trip was to Washington state’s capital, Olympia. On our previous trip north, in 1992, we missed the main cities, skirting (or girting?!) up the coast and over to the islands (Vancouver and San Juan) before returning to the mainland in British Columbia, north of Seattle. This trip was to be the cities’ turn!

The meet-up was with someone I hadn’t seen for over 45 years. Rosemary was a year ahead of me at school, but she lived near me and we were in the same young people’s church group. It’s probably true to say that our parents knew each other better than Rosemary and I did. She went to a different university, soon after went overseas, met Dave (the American she married), and ended up in Washington state. This I’d learnt via family news networks. We didn’t reconnect until a few years ago when we both appeared on our old school’s Facebook page.

A-greyhounding we will go

That’s the context, so now the actual day! First up the Greyhound buses. This is not the most salubrious way to travel in America but, without hiring a car, it was the most efficient way of getting between Seattle and Olympia. Next time, we might hire a car! The morning bus was 30 minutes late, and as I was drafting this post, the return bus, which was scheduled to leave at 7.40pm, was, the Greyhound officer said, due in at 8.15pm-ish (“ish” being the operative component). This would mean getting into Seattle around 9.45 to 10pm, and not back to our apartment until some 30 minutes later. We started to think the commuter bus, albeit a much longer, multi-stop trip, might have been a better idea. As it turned out, we did leave around 8.30pm so it could have been worse. Still, it is now nearly midnight and this post is not finished yet!

However, Greyhound has certainly provided a salutary lesson about humanity – and it’s not all cheery. Actually, it would be funny if it weren’t rather sad – except that we also witnessed the kindness of strangers. For example, when we got to the waiting room, many seats were occupied by bags. We found two empty seats so were fine, but no-one who came in after us, asked for any bags to be moved. They just sat on the floor, or stood. Their patience and courtesy were impressive.

Then there was the guitar-player who offered his food, when a couple of unwell-looking people indicated they were hungry. And the young well-pierced woman who offered all sorts of help to another woman who either groaned and sighed, or talked plaintively on the phone to a son (we think) about an inbreeding situation with some animals (perhaps with snakes, because she mentioned them too, but we’re not sure). “Please”, she whispered into the phone, “please separate out the males, please, please. It’s not good for nature.” There were people, too, who agreed to look after the bags of strangers who wanted to go buy some food.

Then there was the woman attended by two different emergency services (Fire Dept and Ambulance), and who, when asked for her address, said she had no address at the moment, but she’d had this chest pain for a couple of days. The paramedics gently took her to their vans to, they intimated, remove the conversation from the public arena.

Once on the bus, we had the coughing man, and the woman who asked the bus driver if he would charge her phone because her seat didn’t have a power point. We had the mother with baby and toddler who was being sent back north because her boyfriend couldn’t find housing in California and if she were homeless there she’d lose her children, “and it would be hard to get them back”. We had the woman with a tiny dog wearing a pink dress with bow (and I mean the dog here). Over all this were audible conversations going on between people who’d never met, about the old days (meaning the 1970s) in Seattle and LA, and about the passing scenery, such as beautiful Mt Rainier, which kept appearing and disappearing as we rounded bends.

It was all pretty exhausting, but it was a good lesson to us about how other lives are lived.

Checking out Olympia

Anyhow, we arrived in Olympia not too much later than scheduled, and got ourselves to the nominated meeting place, Batdorf and Bronson Cafe. Rosemary and husband Dave soon arrived, and we caught up over coffee, before heading off for some sight-seeing. 

Of course, since Olympia is the state capital, that meant checking out the State Capitol. It’s a lovely old, and traditional capitol building, complete with cupola. Rosemary and Dave were excellent guides, filling us in on all sorts of details. We discovered that the politicians are only part-time, and have other jobs – and that the state budget is created for a two-year period (which seems sensible to us). We learnt that each state in the union can send two statues to the statuary hall in DC, and that Washington state had chosen Mother Joseph and Marcus Whitman. We heard a guide explain that the flower motif in the carpets of the lower house is the trillium, because it grows low to the ground, while for the upper house it’s dogwood, which, as you probably know is a tree and therefore high! I love learning about such symbolism in buildings. We noted that on the second floor of the Capitol are two busts, of Washington (for obvious reasons) and of Martin Luther King Jr. Given he came from nowhere near this area, we all wondered if this were another piece of symbolism reflecting the state’s goals? 

Anyhow, after this, we walked back to the car via the pretty, artificial Capitol Lake, and were driven to lunch at the “classic northwest fish house” Budd Bay Cafe, which Rosemary had sussed out for its waterfront location and suitability for my diet. I had the Cedar Planked Salmon, which is a local specialty, and which explains our cedar-wrapped salmon yesterday. It was yum.

Rosemary and Dave then suggested showing us some nature, as an antidote to city, which of course suited us, so we went to Priest Point Park which provides access to Puget Sound’s Budd Inlet. And access it we did. Indeed, as it was low tide, we nearly accessed the mudflats too well, but we survived, and enjoyed the coastal scenery and the woods in which Rosemary pointed out some local plants, including salmonberry (which we also tasted), wild strawberries, Oregon grape, and salal.

By this time, it was mid-afternoon, and time to go our separate ways, but we greatly appreciated spending time with such lovely, easy-to-be-with people, who also gave us some excellent insights into their world. Special.

We ended our day by checking out a couple of shops – Childhood’s End Gallery (northwest arts and crafts) and local independent bookstore, Browser’s. We dined, very nicely, at a place recommended by Rosemary and Dave’s son, Kizuki Ramen and Izakaya, then – well, you know what!

Oh, and nearly 12kms walked today.

Today’s trivia:

Washington’s state flower is the coast rhododendron.

Today’s images

Still

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