This is Charlie, a neighbor who became a friend during our stay. Quite a background - prosecuting attorney, personal injury attorney, and general playboy (mostly retired). He thinks he looks uncannily like Edward Kennedy. Charlie is from Chicago, so we had a lot to talk about. He also had many great stories about his various life exploits.
Our last two activities while at the Escapees Park were a quick trip to Seattle and the Wooden Boat Festival. In Seattle we took the Underground Tour which starts in Pioneer Square. Below is the starting point:
A guide gave a quite entertaining narrative in an old time bar (one of the first ones in Seattle).
Seattle started-out as a saw mill, located in the tidelands - which is now Pioneer Square. People slowly filled the tidelands in with sawdust from the sawmill, and began building on top of it. Naturally, the streets and buildings began sinking. The streets flooded easily, especially during high tide. A newspaper of the day related a incident were an 11 year old boy drowned in a pot hole. That marked the beginning of serious improvements.
Most original storefronts are actually about 15 feet below the current street level. There are underground passages to follow as we examined the original store fronts, now underground.
Much of the underground is illuminated by skylights embedded in the contemporary sidewalks above.
This is a view of the same sidewalk skylight from below. Pretty amazing:
Another problem that "Old Seattle" had was sewage disposal. Although they quickly adopted the new invention called the Crapper, when the tide came in, it caused a back pressure in the system, resulting in 6 ft. geysers out of the toilet. Uncomfortable for an active user. So Old Seattle had bathrooms built on small towers about ten feet above the original street level.
This was a fascinating tour, and well-worth the $12 admission fee. It was also good to be back in the sun light at regular street level in Pioneer Square. The street performers were back at it again also:
Part of Pioneer Square has a tiny park with a waterfall. It's refreshing to sit in the shade, escaping from the noise of downtown Seattle:
Our last activity was visiting the Wooden Boat Festival in Pt. Townsend. I was somewhat disappointed in that it mostly consisted of seminars involving building and maintaining wooden boats. Something I am distinctly not interested in.
There were some nice large boats in the harbor:
And a demonstration of a wooden kayak being constructed:
This is a very tedious and exacting process, using tiny tools. When the strips are fitted and smoothed-out, a very beautiful kayak is the result:
Next: Head'in Home
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