Monday 17 August 2015
Today's plan involves flying from Anchorage to Seattle, collecting another rental car and checking in to a hotel on Puget Sound.
We were awake at 0530 and out of the B&B a hour later. The rain had continued overnight so it was grey and overcast. Once on the main road south, the traffic started to build up as we expected. It almost came to a halt at Eagle River, but in the end it only took just over an hour to get to Anchorage.
The traffic in town was quite heavy too, but we found a petrol station and filled the car before heading to Ted Stevens International Airport Anchorage, to give it its full title! Here, we returned our car and headed into the terminal.
Today, we are leaving from the South Terminal, so no long walk from the rental car return! Check in and bag drop was very quick and security even quicker, well it was for me! No taking computers out of bags, just stick everything on the belt then walk through! For Lynn however, with various bits of metal embedded in her, she had to wait for a full body X-ray and a pat down!
We found a place to sit and then went in search of some breakfast. Food on the flight to Seattle is not free! Soft drinks and coffee/tea is complimentary though. We had eaten some oranges and grapes en route to the airport, but it will be a long wait until we can get a meal in Seattle.
I managed to get a coffee and a cinnamon swirl from Starbucks, Lynn managed an Egg Mcmuffin! Whilst I was wandering around looking at the food options, I noticed a DC-3 Dakota taxiing out. Quite a sight especially as it was a commercial aircraft! The pioneering spirit lives on in Alaska.
Now on board our aircraft, we have climbed out of Anchorage in thick cloud, hopefully, the clouds will clear in a bit to give us a good view. The flight will be quick too, on 2 hours and 49 minutes. Seattle is an hour ahead of us too, so we should arrive well before 1500.
We are back on the ground now! We did arrive early in bright sunshine and 79F. The views over the Seattle area as we came into land were spectacular. Snow-capped Mount St Helen was clearly visible 50 miles away. After collecting our bags we jumped on the bus to the car rental centre on the edge of the airport. Seattle/Tacoma Airport, or Seatac is a huge airport to the south of the city of Seattle.
We had a car reserved from National and quickly completed the formalities and were asked all the usual questions about extra insurances and would we like a GPS. Finally, we were asked if we'd like an upgrade to a larger car for a few dollars a day extra, it would be to a Chevrolet Impala. We turned down all the offers and went to choose a car in their parking garage. They were so busy, someone was calling for cars from the preparation area and assigning them to customers according to what they'd paid for. He looked at our paperwork and when the next car arrived, he gave it to us. A large car, a Chevrolet Impala - a free upgrade. It is a bit large for the two of us really but we will suffer in silence. Fuel here is cheaper than Alaska, about $3 a U.S. Gallon. That works out at around 50p a litre!
We then set off from the airport up Interstate Route 5. We headed north which took us into Seattle and the traffic was really quite heavy, stop start for several miles, but we survived the experience. After 20 miles, we turned of onto route 104 towards Edmonds where we had a hotel booked. Edmonds is a ferry port. Car ferries leave every 30 minutes to Kingston on the other side of the Puget Sound
The hotel, the Best Western Plus Edmonds Harbour Inn, is one block back from the harbour on Puget Sound. It reminds us of the hotel we stayed in just outside San Francisco. The only downside to it is the railway line that runs between the hotel and the harbour. The trains here use their horns loudly and liberally!
We had a walk out onto the harbour/marina pier. There were lots of people fishing, some conventionally with rod and line whilst others were baiting large cages with raw chicken to catch crabs. There must be a lot of crabs in the sound with a fatal attraction to chicken!
We did find a rather nice sea-food restaurant, but they were fully booked, so we took the car into the middle of Edmonds. The town reminds us of Carmel in California and is clearly rather affluent. There are some very nice restaurants in town, some with very nice prices too! We decided we'd splash out tomorrow and settled for an excellent Thai meal. Both of us had sea-food dishes, mine has squid, prawns and scallops in it, all rather good. We also realised we'd finally had a 'French-fries' free day, no bad thing really.
Our final stop was at the supermarket to buy some bottled water to keep in the car. That way, we always have a drink to hand whilst travelling.
Tomorrow, I have at least try one Seattle coffee shop!
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