Twin Falls, Ballard Locks and Meredith Grey

This past weekend was one of my favorite weekends since we moved to Seattle.

 

Saturday morning, we picked up Chuck's classmate Orion and headed out of the city to go on a hike and see some sites. We drove about 45 minutes to Twin Falls for a hike that had nice scenery but wasn't too strenuous. My favorite kind. :)

 

 

It was a little rainy but the trees provided some nice coverage and eventually the skies cleared up.

 

At one point we got adventurous and hiked off the path down to the water to get a better look at one of the falls.

 

 

We wanted to explore more so we planned to stop at Snoqualmie Falls on the way back but we missed the exit and I had to be at work soon anyway, so we will have to do that one another weekend.

 

On Sunday we slept in a little and then ventured out to take advantage of the sunny day! We heard from Chuck's other classmate, Gold, that we should check out the Ballard Locks sometime so we headed to Ballard, one of our favorite neighborhoods in Seattle. The Locks were awesome and I highly suggest checking them out if you are in Seattle! I wish we had known about this place when my sister and parents were in town visiting.

 

The locks are where boats transfer from the lake to Puget Sound and from the Sound to the lake. Initially I thought this was weird- why can't the boats just drive on through? But apparently the locks are there to maintain the water levels in the lakes. I know I won't describe it well so here is a link to the wikipedia page if you want to read more about how it works. Ballard Locks

 

Here is a boat going through from the lake to the sound. He ties up to this little wall, then they close the gates on both sides of him and start to lower the water level.

 

Now he's way down there!

 

 Then once the water was level with the water in the sound, they opened the gate and he drove off! The whole process took less than 10 minutes. We were amazed.

While standing there, Chuckie noticed a little animal in the water and said he thought it was a seal. We watched for a few minutes for it to come back up and sure enough, it was a little seal! We were really excited about seeing a seal just out in the wild because the only seals we've ever seen were in a zoo. Unfortunately I didn't get any pictures of the little guys. :(

 

As we were leaving, a bunch of "big" boats were coming through and were all going to be transfered at the same time. We would have stayed to watch but our parking time was up so we had to get back to the car.

 

 

After the Locks, we drove back into the heart of Ballard and parked and looked for a lunch place. We got sidetracked by a Gourmet Popcorn store (which Gold had also told us about) where we bought some delicious Hawaiian Salted Caramel Popcorn. Yum. You can purchase their popcorn online here: http://www.kukuruza.com/   I highly recommend it!  After our quick detour, we stopped for lunch/dinner at "The Matador" which we were drawn to mainly because the sign said "Restaurant and Tequila Bar" which to us meant Mexican food and well, tequila. We were sold.

 

 After our late lunch/early dinner, I made Chuck drive us around to find Meredith Grey's house which, I had read earlier in the week, was on Comstock Street in Queen Anne. You know Meredith Grey.

The fictional character from Grey's Anatomy (a show we used to love until it got really weird around the 5th season and we stopped watching.) And while all the filming of the show takes place in LA, including the indoor scenes at Meredith's house, the OUTDOOR shots of her house are from a house in the Queen Anne neighborhood. So we're driving along, looking for Comstock Street and instead, we found this.

 The most amazing views of the skyline and Puget Sound we have seen since moving here. Everyone says the best views are from the Space Needle but honestly I think this is better, because we got a view of everything INCLUDING the Space Needle. This is yet another place I wish we would have known about when my family was in town. The view was breathtaking. But no one has told us about this park! We found it by complete accident! Thank you, Meredith Grey!  (For anyone visiting Seattle, you can find this viewpoint by googling "Kerry Park.")

 After our stop at the surprise park, we found her house 2 blocks later and then on our way out, realized it was only a few blocks away from the Top Pot donuts we ate at on my birthday!

 

That was it for our outdoor adventures this weekend. We also spent a good amount of time watching movies. Two at the theater and one at home. We saw The Great Gatsby, Iron Man 3, and rented the first Star Trek so we can go see the 2nd Star Trek in theaters soon. All 3 were really really good but I have to say Iron Man 3 was by far the favorite. You just can't beat a superheros and Robert Downey Jr.'s humor.