Walkabout 2010 Finale

Towards the end of any walkabout, the energy to crap out these blog postings drops off considerably.   So I decided to just dump all of the loose ends from my trip in one gigantic final episode.  Regardless of what you think, it will still make far more sense than the Lost finale.

Day 10 Pictures

Post wedding chilling in Seattle and a visit to the Fremont Troll.

Day 12 Pictures

Hiking and Biking around Hood River and a visit to one of my favorite restaurants.

Day 13 Pictures

More Hood Mt area hiking and picture taking.

 

Best Meals Not Formally Reviewed

• Elliot’s Oyster House (Seattle) – The one place I can’t wait to get back to.  Amazing oysters and crab.  The waitstaff is very knowledgeable and willing to handhold oyster novices to oyster nirvana.
• Pink Door (Seattle) – This was probably the best overall meal of the entire trip.  Excellent food, wine and cocktails and you get a girl on a trapeze.
• Umi (Seattle) – Very good fresh sushi, but the rolls were hit or miss.
• Pok Pok (Portland) -  Excellent southeast Asian street food.  Don’t fall for the hype of the “award winning” chicken wings.
• Three River’s Grill – The return trip to one of my alltime favorite restaurants.  Great food and an even better view of the Columbian River.

 

Food Map

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Walkabout 2010: Day 7

 

I’m finally at a point where I can catch up on my blogging.  So I’m going to start out with the the highlights and backfill with some of the lesser days.

Day 7 was easily the best day of an already amazingly awesome trip.  Starting out in Sequim I headed for a local diner for my fill of French toast.  It was ok.  I then wondered out to the Dungeness Bay.  But there wasn’t much there except Three Crab’s that Clare from the Pink Door had told us about.

The day was foggy and grey for much of the morning and didn’t have much faith in being able to see anything in the much ballyhooed Hurricane Ridge in Olympic National Park.  Entering the park, it’s 17 miles to the top of the ridge.  And for the first 14 miles there was a thick fog to drive through.  But then the clouds part and one of the most beautiful area of North America become visible.

While on the ridge we met Admiral Nigel Jingjing III (the chipmunk) and Norman Skeeze (the young buck that walked up to us).  I know some of these pictures look photo shopped, but I assure you they are not.

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Eating Coupeville: Toby’s Tavern

Where you don't fuck with Sue and leave your fucking kids at home.

Continuing on with my quest to eat some form of halibut every day, I stumbled upon an extremely old looking bar in Coupeville claiming to have Fine Food.  That’s really all the endorsement I need.  So I entered.

Since I had halibut fish & chips the previous day at the yet to be reviewed Sunbolt’s I went with the only slightly different crispy halibut burger.  It was essentially a round filet of halibut fried and placed on a buttered bun.  It was delicious and paired well with a Bridgeport IPA. 

Seeing that the Toby’s had their own beer, I ordered up a Toby’s Parrot Head Red Ale for dessert.  Despite it being flat and fairly flavorless, I went ahead an purchased an accompanying pint glass.

I don’t know why anyone reading this would ever be in Coupeville, but if you are, you do need to check this place out.  Decent bar food, many good beers on tap and salty bartendrixes make this the only “go-to” place in Coupeville in my books.

B+  (on the dive bar scale)

 

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8 Front St Coupeville, WA

Location:Front St NW,Coupeville,United States

Walkabout 2010: Day 3 Pictures

 

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Worst Hotel Ever

“How quaint”, I thought as we checked in. “Real keys instead of key cards.  I can’t remember the last time I was at a hotel with actual keys”.

That should have gone under the heading of “Signs and Portents”.

But the initial reaction of this charming throwback to a bygone era, known as Hotel Seattle, soon became screams of abject horror and near death.

OK, that was hyperbole.  Nothing almost died, except maybe a tiny bit of our humanity.

I ask few things from a hotel.  The point of a vacation is to spend as little time in the hotel as possible.  So I don’t need mints on the pillow or gold plated shower heads or Tuscan marble foyers.   What I do need is a toilet that can flush.

Let me explain.

Sunday morning I got up “early” to go to Top Pot for the best donuts ever.  But before heading out I needed to tinkle and upon flushing the toilet, it never stopped.  Water flowed continuously.  Since water conservation is a priority of mine (anyone who has seen my front lawn will confirm this) I alerted the dude at the front desk.

“Hmmm.  Our maintenance guy has the day off.  But I’ll see what I can do.”

OK.  It’s not really my problem or my water bill.  So I proceeded to Top Pot.

Once back at the hotel, I was told by (in order not to embarrass her I will keep her identity a secret and only refer to here by some random German automobile initials) VW that the toilet had stopped flushing and she thought that would be an excellent time to “take the Browns to the Superbowl”, “drop the kids off at the pool”, “make gorilla fingers”…..

“YES! YES! I get it.”  I exclaimed.

“Well, just so you’re warned.  The toilet doesn’t flush anymore.  And there’s stuff in it”.

After cleaning up my puke and assuring myself that VW is the only one of her kind to do such disgusting things (maybe she got a bad oyster, yeah, that’s got to be it), I informed the front desk that the toilet had stopped flushing and now wouldn’t flush at all.  The front desk dude told me that the maintenance man would be up shortly.

The maintenance dude came and went and we were told that the water pressure had to build back up in order to flush.  36 hours later and still no flush.

Awesome.

Oh, and don’t lean on the sink or you’ll knock it over.

Walkabout 2010: Day 2 Pictures

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