Late summer is a great time to visit the Pacific Northwest. We drove through Oregon in September a few years back, and before that we hit Seattle, Victoria and Vancouver on our honeymoon. A number of our friends have moved back to Washington State after doing time in Washington DC, and we decided this year to cash in all those "place to stay" tickets we'd collected.

A brief layover in Pittsburgh. When they say "be at the gate no later than ten minutes" before your flight is scheduled to depart, they mean it. While our plane is paused at the gate we head into the Pittsburgh airport-slash-mall to check out the scene and grab a beer before the cross-country leg of the trip. The Sam Adams bar is an oasis of dense cigarette smoke in the otherwise breathable terminal, and we enjoy our beverages listening in to the semi-desperate, semi-icky flirtings of business travelers on a Friday night. We pass on that second beer - hey, our flight leaves in ten minutes - to hear the magic words "all passengers should already be on board..." Busted. Do they really have to lock the door to the jetway? And make a production of punching in the keycode? Jeez. Does pushing back a few minutes ahead of schedule knock a few minutes off their departure statistics? Last ones on the plane again - the plane we just got off of.

The flight to Seattle is smooth, and we break through the sooty clouds over Tacoma at 11pm PST. Not bad, considering we got in a full day of work back east. Probably my favorite part of travelling to Seattle is driving north on I-5 past Boeing field at night, the black glass and yellow lights of downtown dead ahead, the shiny new airliners in the antiseptic glow of the giant hangar down below to the left. It's little past midnight as we pull the rental car into the garage at the Renaissance Madison in downtown Seattle and we're pretty tired, but Ronnie at the desk is very accommodating, moving us up a few floors on the West side of the building to get us a better view of the Puget Sound, and for some reason (probably Melanie's technique of "smiling" and "joking") he comps us breakfast. They're still programming our door lock upstairs, and as we roll our luggage to our room we're met with two security guards right out of the movies - large black gentleman with gold tooth, large white gentleman with buzzcut mullet, both with large suits and those curly walkie-talkie earpieces. More smiles.

Seattle, Part One We confront the Fremont Bridge Troll on Barry White Night. We are not making this up.

Leavenworth Alpine lakes and abundant waffles in the heart of Washington State.

Olympic Peninsula Breathtaking mountain views, verdant rainforests, and one crappy Pacific beach.

Seattle, Part Two One ton of music: EMP, open mike nite, and Bumbershoot 2k.

Just a quick word about Philadelphia's airport: treat it as damage and route around it. Too few gates for the kind of traffic they want to handle. You will be delayed. Wish we could have returned back through Pitt, but a hundred bucks is a hundred bucks. You make the call!

Enjoy Seattle!