We left Grand Teton in the morning. Our plan was to drive as far as we could towards Seattle. It’s a 13+ hour drive total, so we knew we didn’t want to do it in one day.
It was raining as we left Teton, but as we got to the top of the pass on the Teton Pass Highway, we looked back and got a nice view.
We spent a lot of the day driving through Idaho and Montana.
We stopped at a gas station in Missoula, which had a cafe in it. We got sandwiches with bread from their bakery and used their wifi to decide where we would crash for the night. We originally wanted to stop in Coeur d’Alene mainly because of this song by the Head and the Heart. But all the hotels were crazy expensive. So we decided to drive on a bit further to Spokane, Washington.
We checked into our room we reserved at the gas station in Missoula and took a long-awaited shower. Teton didn’t have showers (at least not at our campsite), so other than our swim in the lake, we hadn’t showered in 3 days. We also got to wash our clothes at the hotel and got to repack our bags and put on our clothes that made it the least obvious we had been camping for the last 2 weeks. Showered and wearing clean clothes, we went to this really cool brewpub in a renovated factory of some sort downtown. It was so luxurious to have a drink in a glass, eat off plates that weren’t plastic, etc. We felt the cleanest we had felt since we left San Diego.
I’m glad we were able to ease our way back into civilization. The next day, we woke up and packed up the car (with room for extra passengers this time!) and drove to Seattle. We saw some nice things, like the Columbia River.
We also got some views of Mt. Rainier and the surrounding forests, and then finally we saw signs that indicated we were getting close to Seattle!
Our first stop was to meet up with our friends, Dotty and Jess, who would be joining us for the rest of the road trip. They were the reason we were actually doing the trip. We met them at the Freemont Brewing Company. It was so nice to see them and we all caught up over a beer!
After chatting for an hour or so, we walked down the street a bit to see the Freemont Troll. Most of the activities we did in Seattle were picked out by Dotty and Jess. I felt completely out of place in Seattle after not having taken a shower for 3 days and living in our tent for the previous 2 weeks. It was very disorienting, but it was also fun to just go with the flow and follow them around.
Also nearby was the Gasworks, which Jess wanted to visit because it was used in the filming of 10 Things I Hate About You.
The Gasworks themselves were very cool, but the park also had an amazing view over the water and downtown Seattle.
We went to a cafe to have a very late lunch and a coffee and stopped at an REI or something similar so the girls could get sleeping mats for camping. Then we drove across to Bellevue, where we were staying with a friend of Dotty’s. We made a run to Target to get food and so we could all get toiletries and anything else we might need on the road trip. We had a chill night, since the girls were jetlagged and we had been driving for two days.
We also had a slow start the next morning. We went back into town to get lunch at Bamboo Garden, which was on Jess’ short list. They are completely vegetarian and had a lot of vegan options. And, on the way, we walked past the Space Needle, which felt like a must-see.
We ordered so much food (and ate almost all of it) that our waitress said she was proud of us. Completely stuffed, we walked west to Centennial Park, where we got a really nice view over the water.
We then walked south to the Olympic Sculpture Park.
Then, we kept walking along the shore until we got to Pike Place Market. First, we saw the original Starbucks. There were so many people, we didn’t even bother trying to go in.
Then we went into the market. The main floor was really busy. We got some nice juiced and looked at the beautiful produce displays.
Then we went down to the lower floors, which had cool used book stores, consignment stores, and magic shops. We stayed for quite a while. We left at the side so we could find the gum wall. This may be controversial, but this was absolutely disgusting. We did not stay long.
Then we walked to the Starbucks Reserve, which I was interested in seeing. I got a fancy pour-over and it gave us a nice chance to sit down inside and rest.
We also wanted to explore Capitol Hill for a while and grab a drink. We found this cool record store and also popped into a bookstore across the street (The Elliot Bay Book Company).
Finally, for dinner we found this place, Razzi’s pizza, where we could get a giant vegan pizza to share and eat outside on their patio. It was a nice end to a really long day out. We then caught the bus back to Bellevue.
The next morning, we headed south to Portland! Make sure to keep up with the rest of the series about our road trip all the way back down to San Diego!
