by brac

Created on: August 16, 2009

Washington travel? Romantic? It's the trip together that's romantic. With an eye out for what money can't buy, we head for the airplane ride to a bus and boat trip along the Pacific Northwest Coast. It's Saturday and a beautiful day with coolish temperatures, a good omen for the weather during our trip - outstandingly comfortable. No waiting at the United/US Air electronic check-in point, but we are curious. What do those four S's mean on our boarding passes? At the next checkpoint we discovered that instead of taking the usual walk-though the magnetic archway we had both been chosen at random for a personalized complete, magic wand treatment. SSSS= Strategically Selected Super Search. Flight to Chicago was on time and fifty-five minutes later we were on a shuttle right out there with the big guys (planes) crossing the tarmac from A terminal to C terminal at O'Hare Airport. We met Jean and Dave Minot from Manchester, Virginia who were toting the tell-tale TripTak teal-green bags. Flight to Seattle was long and lean (United/US Air requires that you purchase food now like most airlines). About a third of our 175 passengers ordered the meal but we were not near enough to see what they got for their $7.00 box.

Sunday, we awoke at our normal time unfortunately it was only 3:30 AM (PDT); but as Joe, our tour guide told us last evening, we probably would awake hours earlier than necessary since most of us are from the Eastern Time zone. I re-read Lee Strobel's (let's call him an author from Washington) first two chapters from The Case for Faith. It is such a good book. At 7:00 AM we went down to breakfast. It is amazing how creamy 2% milk tastes after so many months on fat-free. We were good and had cereal and fruit although the Weekend Brunch was loaded with other breakfast delicacies and desserts. We talked a while with Sharon Meising. She like many locals here refers to herself as a Seattle-ite. She has taken 11-12 TripTak tours and is traveling alone on this one. She lives in a suburb called Sea-tac which is where the airport is. George and I walked about 8-10 blocks to get our first taste of Seattle. The first Starbucks Coffee shop hails from Seattle in 1971. Seattle is also the home headquarters of Nordstrom's Department Store, Boeing, and Microsoft.

At 8:00 AM we met Will Watson, our bus driver from Phoenix, Arizona. He has driven with Joe before. As we soon found out, Will is more talkative and interactive with the

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