Seafood Fest, Ballard, Woodland Park Zoo

Ah....another weekend full of exploring. This weekend Amy and I decided we needed a break from our weekends. We have been exploring non stop, and just needed a day to relax and run normal errands. I know....poor us. Anyway, Saturday came after a quick week at work, and we had plans to attend another festival. In Ballard, a neighborhood of Seattle, they have an annual Seafood fest, and it sounded like fun. We left the house early and drove up to the little
town just north of Seattle. We got there early to take advantage of free street parking, and decided to walk down to the Hiram M. Chittendon Locks. On our way we saw signs to take a tour of the ships of the Deadliest Catch.  We got to see the famous Northwestern and were able to board the Sea Star which I believe was in Season 1 of the show. Now, the Sea Star is decommissioned to actually fish, but works for the Discovery channel as a camera boat. We got to talk to the captain, and see some of the gear on the deck of the boat. We decided to not take the tour, just in case my Mom and Greg decide to come visit. We then walked to the Locks. These locks separate the Puget Sound and Lake Washington. We walked down and saw the boats sail into the locks from the Puget Sound. The water rises 26 feet in about 10 minutes, and then the locks open again to Lake Washington. It was interesting to watch, as these were the biggest locks that I've seen. Also, in the locks they have the salmon ladder. The salmon ladder was built as a result of the locks so that the salmon could swim back upstream to Lake Washington and its rivers to spawn. They have a great bridge separated by a dam and the locks where you can look into the water of Puget Sound and see hundreds of Salmon swimming around. They also have a great path that walks along the steps of the fish ladder, where the fish are supposed to jump from "step to step" to eventually make it up to Lake Washington. There is also a viewing area at the final steps of the fish ladder which take you underground to an aquarium like view of all the fish swimming against the current. It was pretty cool to see. Some of those fish were huge, and they could have been our dinner for weeks! After the fish ladder we walked around the garden for a bit before making our way back to the start of the seafood festival. We walked around the festival and they had very similar things to the other 2 festivals we have been to. We sampled some food and bbq and walked around, Amy hit the wine tasting tent and had some Washington wines, and we even caught a herring eating contest (it was short, the guy who won took 8 seconds to drink down a plate of herring). We then decided to do a couple other site seeing activities as we don't go north of Seattle all to often. We went to see the Fremont Troll under the Aurora bridge. This awesome piece of art is completely made of cement and lies underneath the bridge. It is oddly out of place, but is amazing when you drive up to it. You don't expect such a cool looking piece of art to be beneath a crummy old bridge. Afterwards, we drove over to Gas Works Park which we saw on the duck tour, but never had the leisure of walking around it and seeing the art there. The Gas Works Park is filled with old gas mining equipment and towers that the city made safe, left there, and then called it artwork. It lies right on Lake Union and as we ascended "Kite Hill" we could see the Seattle skyline and all the planes landing and taking off from Lake Union.

The next day we ran some errands and then made plans to go to the Woodland Park Zoo where we had tickets to see Marc Broussard that night in concert. 

We packed a nice little picnic and drove up to the zoo. The zoo was actually pretty nice. Actually, besides the National Zoo in Washington D.C. it was

one of the nicest zoos I have been to. They have a good layout where you can have views of the animals from every direction so even if they are hiding in a corner of their pen, you can have a good view. That evening, we got our cooler full of food and headed for the grounds where "Zoo Tunes" was held. It was a relaxing evening with good, soulful Lousiana music. Marc Broussard

and Sharon Jones were both good singers, and as I looked around, it was funny to see so many yuppies trying to identify with soul music. All in all, it was a good relaxing night. Until next time, Seattle SeaFair's Air and Water Show, and golfing with some friends we've met here.