For day 2, we stayed within the city limits of Seattle. We slept in a little, in order to avoid Seattle rush hour traffic into the city, before heading towards Seattle center. We indulged our inner tourists and took a trip to the top of the Space Needle, on a day clear enough to see 2/3 of Mount Rainier and the Olympic Mountains in the distance. We came back down and headed to the Klondike Gold Rush National Park, one of the few indoor national parks in the country.
The park is basically a museum that chronicles the history of the 1898-99 gold rush into Alaska. Gold rushers loaded up on supplies in Seattle, totaling 1 ton. The Mounties of Canada required all gold rushers crossing into the Yukon to carry at least 1 years worth of food, plus there were the clothes, digging equipment (picks, axes, shovels, gold pans), and other gold rush travel necessities, (like a whip saw and hammer with which to construct a boat, in order to make it to the lakes where the gold had been discovered.)
The museum did a wonderful job of chronicling the adventures of 6 famous gold rushers, including John Nordstram, who used his $18,000 gold rush fortune to buy a shoe repair shop . . . which transformed into a national department store.
After touring the museum and watching the educational film about the gold rush, we took a ranger led walking tour of Seattle, where he pointed out many gold rush era monuments and landmarks. We learned the origin of the phrase “skid row” came from the logging industry in gold rush era Seattle, when the logs were slid down a single road, through the seedier parts of town down to the water. This part of town, in fact, had no underground sewers, but had a system of boxes that ran overhead where people would deposit their sewage so it could travel overhead, down to the ocean. To make a long story short, a reporter misunderstood a local discussing the loggers “skid road” and wrote it up as “skid row.”
At one point of the tour, the ranger pointed out the firefighter’s memorial statue in the middle of the city, which prompted Martha and Sam to chime in that they were fire fighters back at home. The guide recommended we try to stop at the end of the tour at the newly opened firefighters museum in the Last Chance Volunteer Fire Department. As we passed, we ran into one of the fire fighters, who let us into the museum despite the fact it was about to close. Martha and Sam, as well as the ranger and the rest of the folks on the tour, were in awe of the opportunity to see all of the old fashioned fire trucks. We think the ranger learned an awful lot on that part of the tour.
Martha’s friends, Emily and Sean were wonderful tour guides. After the tour, they took us down to the market, where we found the famous fish booth where they throw the fish. They also showed us a great little ally tucked away from the crowds where we had some wonderful dungenous crab and smoked salmon rolls. Fantastic eating.
At the end of a long day, we returned to the hotel, did some laundry, then hung out pool side before eating a light dinner of wine, cheese, crackers and salami. A wonderful, long day in Seattle.
