These were all taken the last day we were there. It was a big day, I’ll tell you what.

I hope there are plenty more aquariums in my future because I really like the Seattle Aquarium. It has a lot of species that you would find in Puget sound, which is neat-o.

Despite being a little ritzy Fremont was pretty sweet. There was a lot of activity in a couple little blocks, and the leaves on the trees lining the street were in prime fall colors. It was a little bit like a fairy-tale land, with a troll and everything.

To get to the Ballard Locks you had to go through a neighborhood called Fremont, and we stopped and walked around a bit on the way back. It was an eclectic place with some fairly well to do folks around. Wikipedia says

Sometimes referred to as “The People’s Republic of Fremont,” and at one time a center of the counterculture, Fremont has somewhat gentrified in recent years.

Definitely not your average neighborhood though.

The second day we went to the Hiram M. Chittenden Locks (aka the Ballard Locks) and the accompanying Carl S. English Jr gardens. Two places every bit as spectacular as their names.

I would have happily made the 3 mile trip from Capital Hill to Ballard for either some locks or some gardens and to have both of them together was an unstoppable force the likes of which I may not encounter for a long time to come.

All these pictures are in chronological order.

Hilary and I just came back from an extended weekend visiting her friend Stephanie in Seattle. She has a sick crib in a super-neato part of town (Capital Hill) and was nice enough to show us around town and let us harass her for a while.

Seattle is a city with an impressive amount of things going on for its size. I am fond of it.

One of the things I like most about photography is it makes you more observant to the world around you. Until we meet again Seattle…

In 1889 33 blocks of Seattle burned down and when they rebuilt it they….wait for it…….put the streets at the 2nd floor! So you can go underground now and see what was the ground level in ye olden times. Also, if you get lucky Norm Macdonald will be your tour guide.

The Seattle Underground is a network of underground passageways and basements in downtown Seattle, Washington, United States that was ground level at the city’s origin in the mid-1800s.

In 1907 the city condemned the Underground for fear of bubonic plague. The basements were left to deteriorate or were used as storage. In some cases, they became illegal flophouses for the homeless, gambling halls, speakeasies, and opium dens.

Thanks Wikipedia!

It was a much better drive back to Bozeman than it was going out. It is amazing how much of the landscape you can see when the moon is full and everything is snow covered. Also, Luke was nice enough to stop in Butte and let me run around in the -15 degree weather trying to get a decent night shot.

One of my favorite parts of the trip was our visit to the Seattle Aquarium. I haven’t been to a lot of aquariums (none?), which is too bad because they are really interesting. The colors of things that live underwater are just amazing. I don’t know why that is, but it would certainly be awesome if more things above ground were bright orange and purple.

There were pools where you could touch starfish, anemones, and all sorts of other funny-feeling animals. There was a wheel of jellyfish, squid, otters, sea lions, and too many other things to name. The sea is really a remarkable place that I never experience.

It was a great trip. Seattle is the kind of big city where I would want to live in. Now I’m back in Bozeman where it was -15 degrees last night and I have work to do