Space Needle as seen from a Kenmore Air charter plane

Wednesday, July 7, 2010

Still in Seattle. Of course, they are having a heat wave. Record breaking temperatures, if you will. Nina had to work today and we took our time getting out to check out the city. Nina gave us some passes for the zoo and a couple of other attractions, but we didn't use any of them. Instead, Sammy took us into a historic section of town called Ballard. Wonder why he picked this part of town. We found a video store and bought the movie "Close Encounters of the Third Kind". I wanted the kids to see the Devil's Tower mountain featured in this movie since we might try and stop there on the way home. We stopped to eat at a Thai restuarant that Sammy had been to when he visited here in February. Hoke had trouble finding anything on the menu he wanted. He had noodles. Another strange phenomenon, the area around us seemed to clear not long after our presence was made, odd. Our waitress poured us each a glass of water and, thankfully, never asked if we wanted anything else to drink. That saved us an extra fifteen dollars. Can you tell we are tightening up a little? While we were delighting in our meal, Nina called and asked if we had gotten her message from earlier. We hadn't. She had scheduled a charter flight from Kenmore Air, the place Nina works, for us at 6:30 that evening. My first thought was, "How is Thai food and flying gonna mix?". I chose not to focus on that and looked forward to this flight that Sammy had insisted we would enjoy. We weren't prepared for the flight, as in, we didn't have all of our photography paraphenalia. We made do with what we had. We arrived a little early for our flight and after verifying we were parked in a legitimate parking space, we were told we could walk next door to Starbucks, if we chose, to kill time. Once again, rather than worry about how what we were about to consume and air travel would combine, we partook. Hoke and Addie were very nervous and practically demanded they sit next to their daddy. Hoke started to get a little motion sickness, but maintained and loved the ride. The pilot, Sammy now refers to as "touch-n-go Anna", did an excellent job. Not sure about the rest of the group, but I didn't realize that she had planned to take-off then descend to skirt the water and take-off again. As far as I was concerned, I was hoping there would be other survivors to row that puppy to shore when we crashed. There were so many boats out on this sunny day, we had to circle the lake several times before the water cleared enough for Anna to bring us in, but we didn't mind. Craig called shotgun, so he snagged the best view. Most of the kids first time flying and my first time in a true puddle-jumper on an unusually clear Seattle day, not bad. Thanks Sammy for this treat. We ended the night with supper at Nina's place and watched our new movie. No parking ticket tonight, what a bummer. I suppose the money spent at Starbucks while waiting our turn to fly was about the same. For those of you who don't already know this, Starbucks coffee was invented (I know that isn't the right word to use in this sentence, but I'm using it anyway) in Seattle. I started trying to take a picture of each Starbucks we came across during this visit, but my camera card only holds 400+ pictures. Next time I will have to get a card with more memory. Did I mention the traffic in Seattle is wonderful? If you didn't detect a heavy note of sarcasm in that sentence, let me promise you, it's there. Hoke, in his observation, mentioned that the hobo walking the street was going faster than we were. Hobo was the actual word he used. He was right, of course, about this hobo being faster than traffic.

Didn't realize the name of the plane until I saw this picture

Ain't he cute?

I realize this picture is blurry but had to show the look on Hoke's face. This is either before he got over his fright or he was fighting motion sickness.

More pictures from our air tour