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Soozy's 50 First Dates Tour:The Ride Report

This is the source of those that wear socks with sandals!
For those of you that need educating the point of sandals is not to display your socks!
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:doh:
 
This is the source of those that wear socks with sandals!
For those of you that need educating the point of sandals is not to display your socks!
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:doh:

I had a pair of shoes just like those until I gave them to a hitch hiker last year. I hate to think I wear sandals to display my feet. Cause eewwwee...
 
You guys are too funny!

Carla and I spent the day in Seattle doing Seattle things. We started at the Gehry designed Experience Music Project. I posted pictures of views of this building, but here is the west face from the net. Notice how the Monorail passes through the building, and how the pink/purple metal throws 'purple haze' reflections all around it. Don't stand in one of those reflections very long...they get hot.

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The whole building is a tribute of sorts to Hendrix. The roof on the other side has structures the resemble crushed guitar frets, as in the building is supposed to be a guitar Hendrix crushed. They left out the burning part, because Hendrix crushed and burned guitars. A tiny piece of the frets shows in the upper left corner of this picture.

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Here is an interesting side note; Microsoft gives its employees a Prime card which reduces all these great attractions to about $3...instead of $16-20. :mrgreen:

Inside the EMP is as wild as the outside. They were sticklers about picture taking, so I have a few when they were allowed. And one when they weren't. This is the lobby's twisted vortex of instruments. I was told many of the instrument were playing through a robotic whatchamacallit. I looked and saw the RW, but the instruments had no strings. hmmmmm

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Interior twistedness.

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There was a rental room with a projection wall running dancing lights or MTV-like stuff. I caught the dancing lights and listened to a giant Cobain.

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Hendrix Woodstock outfit.

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The rest of his guitars and a timeline on his life were in a no pics gallery. I was amazed at his musical history. He even backed up Jane Mansfield. Who knew she played? I noticed he was tapped to play with known and famous(later) groups when he was still just a kid and did not even own a guitar.

I another area there was a history of guitars and I had to get this picture of an 1897 Gibson (right) and a 1888 Martin. Woooow...

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There was a whole gallery on Henson and his Muppets. I could not take any pictures, as the security there were better than librarians! I think my favorite fact I learned there was that Munahmanah is actually a puppet, not just the words to the wordless song...Munahmanah brit de bri dibbet, etc.
HA! You will be singing that tune all day!

We moved on to the Children's Museum and saw the sights we saw there.

Pretty stuff left over from the 62 World's Fair. The place of the Dancing Waters I remember watching as a kid. They don't dance anymore.

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In the Museum now.

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I love the Butterfly House! Flying flowers.

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The last one looks like this when open.

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Other pretties.

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I was a service brat, and as a kid, we were in Hawaii before it became a state. We would hide under the General's bushes and eat the nectar out of his flowers...just this kind! I remember the flavor.

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Then we walked by these big balls and rode the Monorail.

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A walk through Nordstrom's shoe department.

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A pair of 900 dollar shoes ladies. Good thing they didn't have 11's.

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And what is this?

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Today was Museum of Flight day!!

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This place is really fantastic. The content and layout are EXCELLENT and it could easily fill two leisurely days if you want to see, read, and hear everything they have for you.

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We dashed across this cool skybridge to start on the far side.

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Yup...cool.

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The Concorde...da da da duuuuuuh!!!!

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Tight quarters!

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Bird houses, right??

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Air Force One...the old pre-Bush one.

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Here is the beginning of Boeing...the Red Barn.

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Here come the planes!

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Some rules of flight.

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Video game...shoot down the right enemy.

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In the Red Barn.

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Shaping propellers by hand.

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I am tired! More later!!
 
My favorite plane as a kid was the Corsair. Very cool. :clap:
 
The info said the prop was so large that the peculiar drop bend in the wings was designed in so that the front of the plane could stay high enough to create clearance for the prop. It sure seems like that bend also made the wings fold up tidier and not hit at the tips.

I am going to post more pictures shortly.
 
The info said the prop was so large that the peculiar drop bend in the wings was designed in so that the front of the plane could stay high enough to create clearance for the prop. It sure seems like that bend also made the wings fold up tidier and not hit at the tips..

Exactly! The prop was the reason for the gull wing. Did you or are you also going to get to the Spruce Goose museum in the Portland area?
 
On with the show!

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Designed in the 60's and capable of greater than 2000mph...top speed was classified. John heard tales of 3500! Blackbird.

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MIG

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Our answer to the MIG...bigger, faster, but not as agile. F-4

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This one wins as my favorite. Judge it as if it were made today and it mixes a retro quality with a cartoon quality of the large feet and large head, but small body. The description said it was very hard to fly.

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This is a picture of a picture of a solar + fuel powered unmanned thing. How cool is that!?

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There is a mock flight control tower with a wonderful view of the Boeing landing strips, and you hear all the chatter from the real tower. You can play with what we thought was a real time computer tracking all the US flights. It just didn't line up though, as there were flights over the Pacific going from Atlanta to Chicago.

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And always Rainier watching over all of it.

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I ran a video of a British AWACS-like flight landing. If I figure out how to post it, I will do so.

Today is Northwest Trek and a run up Mt. Rainier. So animal and mountain lovers, your day has come.:mrgreen:
 
Exactly! The prop was the reason for the gull wing. Did you or are you also going to get to the Spruce Goose museum in the Portland area?

We are heading to Portland to go sailing on the 23rd and will go to the Spruce Goose on the 24th. I leave the PNW on the 25th!
 
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Interesting trivia about that particular SR-71 Blackbird. It is one of two M-21 variants made. The smaller drone on top of the Blackbird was meant to be launched while in flight to overfly areas too dangerous for manned reconnaisance. Unfortunately during a test of the project the drone crashed into the test Blackbird and caused it to crash, the pilots had to ditch in the sea leading to the drowning death of one of them when his pressure suit leaked. The program was halted after that failure.
 
Soozy--
I am so jealous it hurts. My dream job in life at one point in time involved living in Seattle and every morning I would drive south on I-5 and if I saw Rainier over the city I knew it was going to be an amazing day, if I didn't see it it would still be a cool day. Afterall Seattle is one of the best cities on earth to live....well take away the idiot Californians who moved up there in he 80's and 90's and ruined it by blowing up the housing prices.

If you get a chance go to the Cinerama downtown for a movie. It is one of the few remaining true Cinerama theatres left. I believe Paul Allen owns it and refurbished it.

Thanks for sharing.....hope you keep having an amazing time!
 
Melissa and I have an 8mm video of us landing at that Airport in a 1929 Stearman Biplane. Melissa is so cute in her Red Baron Flight Cap and goggles in the video flying over Peugeot Sound.

We loved the Museum, I remember flying over the Museum and filming our Motorhome in the parking lot.

My favorite airplane when I was a kid was the SPAD XIII.
My Dad's friend owned one and would let me play in the cockpit for hours.

At that trip to Seattle was the same trip where we went to McMinnville Oregon. The Spruce Goose was in pieces in temporary makeshift hangers across the road from where it is now. I actually got to walk around inside the fuselage and wing. I was like a kid meeting Superman for the first time.

Great Pictures Soozy! Don't hurry home just yet. It's starting to top 100 degrees regularly here in Texas.

The Butterflies were awesome.
 
Wow. I shouldn't ever go there. Between the planes and scale models, I would never leave the place. Thanks for the pics!!
 
We went to Northwest Trek, a natural zoo of sorts that has most of the animals in a free range setting where they run you through on trams. There are miles of walking trails with natural habitats for the more carnivorus animals. All the animals are PNW types. This place was quiet, lush, and shady. I loved just wandering around and I got some fun video.

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Cougar.

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I know we have bobcats around Arlington, and I thought they were the same cat as a Linx...now I know the difference.

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The tram passed through an Elk herd.

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And I came face to face with the bull.

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Scruffy looking. Everyone was in velvet this time of year.

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This was a bachelor herd.

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Bison.

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Uh oh...

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Duck Weed filled wetlands. It isn't gross or slimey...it is billions of tiny clover looking plants floating on the surface of the water and most water creatures love them. If you ever water skied in Louisiana, you swished right through them.

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Swans! Oooh ahhh!

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My next picture is one of my bucket list things. I had never seen a moose!

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This fellow is in the first video just scratching away like you guys do when you first get up in the morning. You know you do it.

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Scratching Beaver

Here is a River Otter that I will send to Marianne, for she wants one so badly.

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Here is a cut from a tree that was 20 years old during the beginning of the Rennaisance.

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Six feet across.

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Wolf!

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Grizzly. He looks fun. I had no idea how much he would entertain us, but I got video for you. We were transfixed for an hour watching this big male.

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Bathing Grizzly 1

Grizzly Bathing 2

Grizzly Bathing 3

Grizzly Bathing 4

Grizzly Bathing 5

Grizzly Bathing 6

Bald Eagle.

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Rocky and Bullwinkle

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We went to Tacoma and had seafood by Commencement Bay and caught the sunset.

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Mount Rainier will be next week. My time up here is nearing a close and it is time to think about where I will go as I leave from Portland in a week.
 
The Corsair has always been my favorite.

There was a SR-71 at the airshow in OKC many years ago, talking to the pilot he said that once they cleared OKC airspace and up to altitude that it would take them about 45 minutes to get back to California. I remember a Reader's Digest story long ago about the plane saying that it could cover the length of Montana in 13 minutes. My parents live about 7 miles north of the airport, so the backyard was a good place to watch some of the plans flying in for the show and during the weekend coming in on approach for their part of the show. We were doing an addition onto the house the following Monday (were pulling off the existing roof) so we saw the SR-71 flying out over us, it had a very unique roar to it.
 
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