Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah
Zip-A-Dee-A
My oh my, what a wonderful day
Plenty of sunshine heading my way
Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah
Zip-A-Dee-A
Mister bluebird on my shoulder
It's the truth
It's actual
Everything is satisfactual
Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah
Zip-A-Dee-A
Wonderful feeling
Wonderful day
My humming husband was humming this all day. And it describes our feelings towards the day we had. I don’t think we could have crammed any more into this day than we did. As it was, we left here at 8:30 and returned home at 9:56. But, we began the day with a designer hand-formed donut from Top Pot and ended with a hot fudge sundae from Dick’s. Sweet day. Oh, yeah, maybe I should mention the 9 miles that we walked around the area to earn those sweet goodies.
We had decided our goals for the day based upon the Seattle Marathon schedule and route. Yep, there was a marathon in town this weekend but it was mostly in the downtown area starting around the Space Needle. I’m glad I’m not a tourist with only this weekend to visit Seattle. Our plan was to skirt this and head to northern Seattle where we could visit the Chittenden Locks and Dam, Discovery Park, the Fremont area and then head home. We hit all of these but had some serendipitous moments also.
Up at the usual time, breakfast, out the door and at our first destination by - oops, we detoured when we found a Top Pot Donut Shop, right next to the Trader Joe's. An upscale donut shop? How do you do that?
Well, high ceilings, metal and wood chairs and tables, floor to ceiling windows, but they ruined it all with head banger music coming from all the speakers - you couldn’t even escape in the bathroom, in fact, I think it was louder in there. I thought someone was being tortured. Lest you think that they were appealing to the majority of their customers, I looked around and many had hair as grey as ours while the others were young couples with kids.
OK, now, with that distraction out of the way, we hit our first destination. First we had to find parking, trying to avoid the city rates and the 2 hour limit. 2 blocks away we found a quiet, free, unlimited time residential street and parked. Our first goal was the Chittenden (Ballard) Locks. The Chittenden Locks are on the northern side of Seattle and link Puget Sound with Union Lake and further on to Washington Lake. Back in the mid-1800’s, getting goods to market from interior Washington to Puget Sound was extremely difficult and city fathers determined that a canal would shorten and ease the journey. Where to put it was the problem and there were at least 6 schemes to do this.
One of these was a hand dug ditch dug by Harvey Pike in 1860.
Logs could be pushed and maneuvered down this narrow, shallow channel but, even when it was widened in 1883, it could not accommodate large vessels. Other schemes were advanced but these were either shot down by the railroad because they went through their tracks, or were too costly or were not wide enough for the anticipated traffic. Finally, after decades of debate, construction of a Ship Canal began in 1911. The project was advanced by General Hiram M. Chittenden who was an engineer with the Army Corps of Engineers.
He fought for cement locks which would not deteriorate in the water rather than wooden locks that the forest industry wanted. He also thought that small ships would use the locks more than larger vessels and made two locks, a larger one and a smaller one. Since a larger lock would cost more to operate, a smaller one would save money in the long run. Finally he also wanted to prevent the salt water of Puget Sound from entering the lakes and designed the locks to prevent this by using gravity and the waters of Union Lake to fill the locks.
Here the long lock off to the left is filled with water waiting for ships to enter. On the right the small lock has opened and a small boat is motoring away.
Using his schemes, the locks were built and opened in 1917. By this time, a stroke had confined Hiram Chittenden to a wheel chair. He died on October 9, 1917. In 1956, the Corps of Engineers renamed the locks in his memory.
Usually the locks work as they should. But sometimes they have to stretch to preform on the next level. Here are some unusual challenges. How about this dry-docked boat that was just a bit too big?
And here’s another challenge. Whoever would have expected this to come through the locks?
I’m not sure why a float plane had to go through but it did.
A sub?
I guess if you wait long enough, you can see everything coming through.
The neatest thing about these locks is that they are viewer friendly. There are walkways all around, even over the locks themselves. We can talk to the people on the boats and to the Lock Operators and watch the whole process from several different prospectives. Never in my wildest imagination would I ever guess that the Locks would be such a tourist attraction. I knew that we wanted to see them but then we like engineering projects. Families, tour groups, couples, photographers and a veritable United Nations with tourists from all over and all languages being use. Engineering as Entertainment. Who would have thought?
We watched the locks for about an hour and here are some pictures from our viewing. They can fit up to 8 or 10 boats in a lock at a time, depending upon the size. For smaller boats like the one above, the can fit two across. Note also the kayaks off to the side. Since they could not tie down, they were told to hold on.
Our next goal was to see the fish ladders. We had already been told that there had not been many fish in them this year. But we headed on over to see for ourselves. There is a nice viewing area with huge windows so we could all see. We did see two salmon swimming upstream and a few smaller smolts heading down. But there was not much activity.
Then we heard the band tuning up and we headed back over the locks to the Visitor Center area to hear the concert. Marvelous jazz band but my favorite moment came right before we left when an older gentleman in his late 80’s or early 90’s began to dance. He danced in one spot for a while and then danced slowly across the grass to the other side and back again. A marvelous moment in time and others enjoyed it as much as I.
I had brought sandwiches for lunch and we sat on the hillside overlooking the locks and dam eating. The sun was shining, the parade of boats entering the locks continued, the music filled the air and everyone was having a great time.
But then, time for our walk. Our third goal for the day was to walk through Discovery Park. But before we got to the park, we walked through the heron hatchery. We looked up and saw about 8 nests. This one had at least 4 in it.
We took the Discovery Trail around the park. Mostly wooded but when we got to the south beach side, we had an open view of the Seattle skyline, the cruise boats heading north for the Alaska Inner Passage, the hills of the city and - Mt Rainier. Again, its ghostly appearance above the skyline enchanted us.
Unfortunately, as beautiful as Rainier is, it is also very dangerous. Since we have been in the area, we have heard of 7 deaths. All of these people were experienced and had climbed Rainier before but it is treacherous up there and they all lost their lives this time. Every time I look at Mt. Rainier, I can’t help but think of these lives lost.
Several days ago we were in Port Townsend watching the cruise ships glide by on their way to the Inner Passage. Here we saw them begin their cruise.
We headed back to the Locks via a neat bridge over the trail tracks,
watched the locks traffic some more,
found our car and began to head on home for dinner. It’s 6:00 now and we’re a bit hungry. Oops, we haven’t seen all that was on our list for this area of Seattle. We still have to see the Troll, Lenin and Waiting for the Interurban, 3 statues in the Fremont area. Dinner and the rest of the day are in the next blog.
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