Exploring Seattle – Pacific Science Center and Harbor Cruise

We did some touristy stuff around here last weekend.  We have CityPasses that let us do all the cool stuff for a discount, but we have to do it all within nine days.  First, we went to the Pacific Science Center, which is a bit like the Science Museum in St. Paul.  We saw an IMAX movie about Mummies and then there was also an exhibit about King Tut.  We had to pay extra for the King Tut exhibit, which I’m not sure was worth it.  I was hoping they might have the actual mummy of King Tut; in hindsight I guess it was kind of silly to expect the actual mummy to be on tour.  They had a replica.  The exhibit was also pretty busy with people with audio guides and cameras.  People with audio guides are kind of irritating because they spend too much time at each item listening to whatever it’s saying and they don’t seem to really be paying attention to what’s happening around them.  Then there were the people who stopped and took pictures of every item in the exhibit.  I’m such a complainer.  Oh well.  Let’s look at pictures!

I only took three. (Click to embiggen.)

This was unusual.  I tried it, but we didn’t get a picture because I had the camera with me while I was out there.  It was a little scary, but there’s little chance that you’ll fall.  Couldn’t get Will up there though.

However, with only a little prodding I managed to get him into a space shuttle.

The periscope was really neat.  It apparently sticks out over the top of the building so on a clear day you can see birds and Lake Union, and boats, and mountains.

Then they had this kind of bug safari along with snakes, scorpions, and tarantulas .  They had a naked mole rat colony, too.  It’s a bit like a big ant farm but instead of ants, there are these hideous, pale, naked things with giant teeth and tiny eyes.

Will rode a bug.

And I held a bug.

Enjoy this angle.

I thought the roaches were neat.  The person tending the roaches informed us that they’re quite clean.  I think it would be nice to have one as a pet.  They’re pretty cute; certainly much cuter than the hideous butterflies.

Look at that hideous face.  Those giant bug eyes.  And don’t even get me started on that proboscis.

This one is a bit of a butterface, and by that I mean everything is nice but her face.

Heh, the butterfly is a butterface.  Is that something Will would say (write)?  No, Will’s not that mean.  But really, a butterfly’s head is pretty ugly close up.  The wings are nice though.

Then of course they had a bunch of things to play with like a little pool where you could touch starfish and sea anemones.  You could mess with physics experiments like holding a spinning wheel on a spinning platform or pulling on levers.  They had this gigantic zipper where you could see in detail how the teeth actually get pulled and locked together.  There was a toilet cut in half so you could see the siphon action in the bottom when it was flushed and how the water seals out “sewer odors.”  Also funhouse mirrors.

After our adventure in the Pacific Science Center, we decided we had time for a harbor tour cruise, so we should get that out of the way.  Along the way we decided maybe it wasn’t such a great idea because it was a lot farther to walk than we thought it was and we were kind of starving.  But we managed it, telling ourselves we would eat at Red Robin afterward.  The cruise was way cool.  The weather was nice so there was a lot to see, including more Mt. Rainier, which remember is 54 miles away.

The cruise was in Elliot Bay.  There are some beaches around but our tour guide informed us that the water temperature doesn’t get above 52 degrees, so there’s not much swimming going on I guess.

The Space Needle.

The Space Needle is the landmark of Seattle.  It was built for the World’s Fair in 1962 and it is 605 feet tall.  There is a rotating restaurant at the top.  It has a heavy, deep foundation, so its center of gravity is only five feet above the ground, and it can withstand hurricane-like winds and earth quakes of up to 9 on the Richter Scale.  In 2001, a 6.8 earth quake caused water to slosh out of the toilets up there.  So yay earth quakes and volcanoes!?  The weather is nice?

Read more about the Space Needle.

We had boats and mountains on one side.

City on the other.

Also a Ferris Wheel that Will has no interest in.  It just opened a few weeks ago.  There is something similar in London called the London Eye, but the London Eye is much bigger; more than twice the height.

Another iconic Seattle thing is the ferries that bring cars and people to different places in Puget Sound.  Way on the left you can kind of see the big opening into which they drive the cars.  There’s one just like it on the other side.  In fact, it has two of everything.  If you cut the ferry in half down the middle, you’ll have two identical halves.  After it pulls into a port and is ready to leave again, instead of having to turn the behemoth around, the captain just walks to the other end and the back of the boat becomes the front.

Here’s Will.  I like him.  I was sort of trying to get that boat in the frame with him.  It didn’t work out so well.

Then he had to take a picture of me.  He’s much better at this whole picture making thing.

This next thing is pretty neat.  They’re boats full of shipping containers from all over the world.

I guess being a crane operator for these things is pretty stressful because you’re expected to do it fast.  They only get dropped occasionally.  Including one that broke open and ended up dumping a load into the ocean… a load of rubber duckies.  So some scientists tracked the rubber ducks to help figure out ocean currents.  The ducks showed up on every coast.

Here’s a crane in action.

Here’s our boat, the Spirit of Seattle.

By the end of the hour long cruise we were starving, so we went to Red Robin as planned.  We had to wait around for a while because it was about that time on a Saturday, but I thought it was worth it.  They have bottomless root beer floats and all you can eat steak fries when you order a burger.  Oh yes.

It was a long day, when we got home I think it was almost 9 o’clock.  And we had more stuff to do the next day.

 

 

 

 

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