adventure day - one day a weekend (very similar to seattle saturday from when i first moved here) where adventure is the theme, or at least one of the themes. sunday was adventure day II.
i didn't have my camera for adventure day I, but to sum it up: a flower show at the bellevue botanical gardens; a quick visit to the park right next door to the bellevue botanical gardens; jamba juice, where we both ordered a small and jamie got a medium while i got a small and for some reason felt left out; a park on mercer island where i read on the small patch of swimming beach. way too cold for people swimming, but this tiny dog was determined to guard the beach from slightly confused ducks; and a walk down some of the i-90 floating bridge. a definite park theme with this adventure day.
with the camera ready, adventure day II was set to go:
driving to a secret destination (not that secret for the thousands of cars that pass it every day) south of seattle, we came across shipwreck beads, the worlds largest bead emporium. i replaced the word emporium with their use of the word "store" since i thought emporium was a better description, especially if it was a "worlds largest." one great big building with many many beads. i kept trying to look at all the employees and even the people shopping to see if they had bead necklaces on, but most of them didn't (i saw two with them on, about 15 with nothing). i guess people are doing different things with beads these days other than wearing them. Yep there it is, the world's largest bead emporium.
after a bit more driving, we arrived at the secret destination: four giant metal cows! They were right off of the freeway and made of giant oil cans. not sure if they are painted or just naturally rusted. The mother/calf one was a bit confusing since the mother cow had horns. After a little bit of research, apparently there are many breeds of female cows that have horns. The city of Austin public library says that the Danish Red, the White Park and the Texas Longhorn all have female cows with horns. It must be one of those then.
For the return trip we stopped by the Spar cafe and restaurant in Olympia, the Washington State capital. Olympia is a much cooler place than Carson City, Nevada (apologies to the 17 non-governmental residents of Carson City, Nevada). It has that cool small town downtown feel to it. Kind of like a surviving Fargo, North Dakota.After a miscommunication with the waitress, we received our spicy macaroni and cheese $5.00 blue plate special (which was definitely not our spicy macaroni and cheese pizza $5.00 chef's special). We wondered how they were going to do a macaroni and cheese pizza, since putting pasta on top of pizza is not a usual practice. And the answer is that they can't.
The final stop was the world famous Bob's Java Jive. I guess back in the day, Bob had two chimpanzees named "Java" and "Jive" that would bang on bongos while they would play the guitar and sing. That would have been awesome to see. This place is not the easiest to find since it is nearly under two freeways. Its been in a lot of movies that were filmed in Tacoma: Three Fugitives, I Love You to Death, Ten Things I Hate About You, and Say Anything.I don't remember any of those (ten things vaguely, but I don't remember this place in it).
So there it is. Adventure Day II.
And a side note. My friend is embarking on an amazing multi-year world trip (she doesn't actually know when she is coming back). Have fun Megan! We will definitely miss you.
I don't know who the guy in the back is.
