We stayed there for five nights (camping in a super rainy area is not that fun, especially when you're using a cheap tent) and did most of the touristy stuff (Space Needle, Pike Place Market, Science Fiction Museum/Experience Music Project, Aquarium, Science Center, International District). The FolkLike Festival happened to be going on that weekend, so we walked around that for a while too, but it seemed kind of lame. Unless of course you were looking for handmade/recycled clothing or jewelry. Or terrible music. Though to be fair, we were there during the day, and they probably had the better bands playing at night. At one point we sat down to eat lunch and some guy sat down near us and starting setting up to play some music, which he described as a mix between "Gregorian chants and Christian rock." We snarfed down the rest of our food and left as quickly as possible as soon as he starting "singing" about Jesus.
We also met up one night with one of my old neighbors from back home who now lives in one of Seattle's suburbs and had dinner. We spent a lot of time going out to eat, which is great when you're in a town that has a ton of choices that accommodate vegetarians. I'm not a vegetarian, but my boyfriend is. It was really difficult finding food he could eat when driving through Wyoming and Nebraska on the way home.
Since we were so close, we decided to head up to Vancouver for a night, as neither of us had been to Canada since we were little kids. We were pulled off to the side while crossing the border (I assume because E (which I will now use to refer to my boyfriend, because I'm tired of typing that out, and he has an unusual name, so I don't want to ID him by using it) looks like a damn hippie) and had to wait for a few minutes while they looked at my car and I guess background checked us or something, I don't know. It took forever to find a hotel in Vancouver, but we eventually found a fairly cheap one that was close to a lot of stuff, and spent the evening wandering around Broadway. That night I discovered that in Canada, they don't drink bloody marys, they drink Caesars, which use Clamato juice instead of tomato. They taste pretty much the same though.
The next morning we headed back south. We had decided to take Highway 101 down the coast for a little while before cutting back across to Iowa, and made it to Ilwaco, WA, before deciding to stop for the night. The next morning we stopped back in Long Beach so we could see the ocean. Despite the fact that it was cold, drizzly and windy, it was still good to see the Pacific again after about ten years. I also had some delicious seafood stew for lunch, which I was pretty excited about, since I hadn't had any seafood since we'd been on the coast (unless you count sushi, which I guess you should, heh). We continued on down the coast, taking in the beautiful scenery and pissing off the local drivers by going under the speed limit to gawk at it all.
I wish we could have spent more time on the coast, but we did have to be back home in time for me to go to work. We camped just west of Eugene that night, then cut across Oregon using highway 20, which was a mistake. That is the most boring road I've ever seen. I don't even remember which town we stayed in that night, somewhere in Idaho is all I can recall. The next day we drove the rest of the way through Idaho, part of Utah, and into Wyoming. We stayed in Laramie that night, and hightailed it across Nebraska (which takes friggin forever to drive through the long way) and back into Iowa, just in time to miss my ten-year high school reunion, which was fine with me.
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