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I’ve told people about this but until you actually see airplanes being shipped on trains you can’t get the full effect.

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We took advantage of a writer’s conference that Jenny attended in Seattle to celebrate our wedding anniversary. Here’s a quick run down of sites. Going from Cocolalla, Idaho to Seattle, Washington was a bit of a culture shock since we haven’t gotten out much. It’s pretty peaceful form our tour boat.

Seattle Skyline (click to enlarge)

Jenny got to visit the mother-ship of all Nordstrom stores. The original build in 1902.

The Original Nordstrom Store

Off in the distance we got to see the mother shop of Starbucks.

Starbucks Headquarters

Everyone recommended Pikes Place Market. It is truly a taste of Seattle with a lot of great local treasures. I thought I’d touch up the photo slightly to illustrate what these places look like to an introvert.

Pikes Place Market (click to enlarge)

I don’t recall the “Gum Wall” being recommended but in an alley (we find the most unusual routes) we found an amazing tribute to gum. It felt very icky.

This is just a close up of the gum wall. Imagine a wall 30 feet by 10 feet filled with wads of gum.

Life saving blue tape. While sight seeing from atop the Space Needle, we discovered the secret of it’s longevity appears to be the blue tape that is holding it together and keeping us from falling 900+ feet.

The only thing between us and death - some blue tape.

Dinner culminated at the Space Needle. Here is a shot of us eating dinner. Well, at least the shadow of us eating dinner.

We combined the names and called it the Sneedle.

And finally we close with the Snoqualmie Falls which we caught on the way home.

Snoqualmie Falls (click to enlarge)

Our ride home was the same day some kook was predicting the rapture. For us, it was close. We went from the humanity of the big city to the hint of heaven in Cocolalla.

A long time goal of replacing the “Stairs of Death” that lead down to our fire pit is complete. Below are some pictures of the process. The “Stairs of Death” are very steep and narrow stairs that most everyone thought were dangerous (note: nobody ever died on them so I don’t know how they can complain).

Day 1: A truck load of dirt was delivered to our yard. And the fun begins of figuring out how to do whatever it is that I want to do. (Feel free to click on any image to show details)

Here’s a good shot showing the imfamous “Stairs of Death” where nobody has ever died (or did I mention that already).

Now that the dirt is close to where it will live for the rest of my life, I needed to move it into place. Add one shovel and start burning calories.

This next shot shows the first four stairs. As you can see, version 2.0 stairs are less steep. This will make people feel more comfortable, relaxed, and so, they’re probably not be alert and thus will fall down these stairs like a waterfall of people. You can also see the florescent orange string that follows the angle of the new stairs and makes it look like an engineer planned something. Don’t be fooled.

Day 2: By the end of day two, 17 very heavy stairs were in place and several of the old stairs were gone. Note the orange string. It made me feel good though so I left it there. Something you can’t see here are the “Kamikaze Flies From Hell”. These stupid things will fly at their target and bang into them. They’ll hit your eye, fly in your ear or mouth. They then burrow down to your skin and bite holes in your arm. We’re not talking deer flies which are twice the size and land much more gently. These beasts are smaller and in greater numbers. Every time I work outside it never fails that I inhale and then gag on one that has flown into my mouth.

Day 3: In order to prevent further complaining I decided to make each step twice as wide. This will also give people a sense of security before they relax, forget what they’re doing and fall down the stairs. I ate another fly today.

And finally, with minutes to spare before it began to rain, Jenny finally got the circular staircase she has always wanted.

All that’s left now is cleaning up, some landscaping, grass seed and soon we’ll enjoy our first bonfire of the year. That is, as long as we safely make it down the new stairs.