Vancouver Washington Day Trips:
 Our trip to the Seattle WA Aquarium July 2008
 

One of the benefits of living in Vancouver Washington (which is just north of Portland Oregon) is the easy access to vacation destinations in the Pacific Northwest, the USA and the rest of the world!  One of our family’s favorite day trips is to Seattle Washington, at about 3 hours away by private automobile on I-5 (about 3.5 hours by Amtrak Cascades).  With our in-town and work calendar reasonably clear we set out on a sunny summer weekend morning to see the Seattle Aquarium, Elliot Bay waterfront dining and other sights.

Starting out we follow the Columbia River until Longview / Kelso, where the Columbia turns West again on towards the Pacific.  This is also the point in the journey where we first encounter the visible influence of Mt. Rainier by way of the Cowlitz River.   Our views of the mighty mountain are a sliver of the top here in Clark County however, as we move northward on our trip, Mt. Rainier will become ever more visible and impressive!

While on our northward leg of the trip we expect to slow as we get closer to Tacoma, and sure enough we encountered a slowing of traffic just south of Ft. Lewis, as the WSDOT had the right lane of traffic closed.  As we came to the “scene” what we saw were hundreds of Bikers making the U-Turn for their “Rally For the Troops.”   What a sight with almost every bike sporting one or more US Flags!

The bikers left the freeway at the Fife exit, and we continued uneventfully and finally arrived at the Seattle waterfront.  Now the task of finding parking began!   With Kathryn’s uncanny good luck with finding spots, we found a metered spot available right on Alaskan Way (free meters on Sunday), very close to the cruise ship dock, and a short-block from the Aquarium at Pier 59.  To be sure this was our best luck at weekend parking in this part of Seattle!  

We grabbed at bite at Fisherman’s eating outdoors.  We then walked over to the Aquarium.  Pulling out our handy-dandy coupon from the Entertainment Book (Seattle Edition!) one of the adult admissions was free (saved us $15).  At the counter we saw another perhaps better deal for admission when you purchase a Seattle CityPass for $44, which gives you one admission to each of 5 venues including the Aquarium – what a great deal!  We’ll be purchasing the Seattle Pass next time to be sure.



The living exhibits and other displays at the Aquarium do a great job of explaining the sea-life in the Puget Sound and Pacific Ocean waters off-shore.  We very much enjoyed the hands-on tide-pool displays as well, where the water is authentically COLD (you can touch the creatures with one instantly-numbed finger!) with many interesting tide-pool creatures inhabiting them.  If you like visits to Aquariums, we recommend you put this one on your list!