The bus to Ballard

Experiencing the two temperature extremes has just been great. Not having to smother sun cream on everyday comes as a relief.  With our tans we get taken for Aussies to South Africans to Kiwis. The best line so far from a large character on a fruit stall "Jesus Christ you two, you are waaaaay too tanned to be North Pacific folk, god damn it-Jesus yeah you are'

There were plenty of rules to observe on the bus that took us across to Ballard. If any were broken it stated that you could face imprisonment! One of them was you need to pay the right fare. We didn't have the correct fare. The bus doesn't do change. Thankfully Fe's smiley face kept us out of jail and we got through the journey a couple of dollars light.

On having the first coffee of the day we got speaking with a local. Friendly types these Ballard lot. He mentioned that Seattle only gets around 27 clear sky days a year. So it seems if the rain doesn't grind you the grey days certainly will. He also mentioned that he supports Fulham FC and that he just loves getting across to England. Have a nice day was the full stop on this very polite conversion. Ballard seemed pretty easy going.

The Hiram M. Chittenden Locks are a complex of locks that sit at the west end of Salmon Bay, part of Seattle's Lake Washington Ship Canal. The locks serve three purposes (1) to maintain the water level of the fresh water Lake Washington and Lake Union at 20–22 feet above sea level, (2) to prevent the mixing of sea water from Puget Sound with the fresh water of the lakes and (3) to move boats from the water level of the lakes to the water level of Puget Sound, and vice versa.  A fish ladder is integrated into the locks to aid the migration of anadromous fish, notably salmon. We were out of season so only saw a few small fish going the wrong way!  The Starbound Alaskan dredger greeted us at the locks. She'd been out for around a month. Biggest fishing boat we'd ever seen. She was the size of an average ferry!! Heavily listing to the back end almost putting her down past her plimsoll line. You could say she looked pretty laden with bottom catch fish that she had been out dredging for. The boys onboard looked like they were straight out of 'Deadliest Catch'.

The thing that we've loved about travelling and not holidaying is that you have more time. A good example of this, we stopped to talk to Matt, Skip and lovely girl (who's name we have unfortunately forgotten). On walking back from the canals we came across a roadside garage that looked pretty interesting. We stopped to find Matt standing underneath a classic looking Volvo 445s. Then there was Skip. Skip was getting by very comfortably by acquiring stuff that other folk deemed to be trash. Sounded similar to the St Andrews 'skip-watch' missions conceived during a 'Dads night out'. And last but not least a girl, we've forgotten her name (sorry if your reading this, please excuse us as we have been out of the system for a while) who was carving the most beautiful lattice panels to form the intricate parts of new church organs. The 3 of them hired this workshop which was filled with all sorts of stuff! And that was that really, a nice chat done, a fridge magnet in exchange for our blog details and we were back on the bus to Seattle. But not before a quick stroll of yet another Ballard street of complete Seattle coolness. These northwest parts seem to have unpretentious, effortless, urban coolness all wrapped up.

We got off the bus and popped our heads into the Beechers artisan cheese makers shop (http://www.beechershandmadecheese.com/). We treated ourselves to a piping hot tub of macaroni cheese to warm us up. OMG it was good. We sat munching away watching the curds and whey being turned in the on site factory. We could have bought a good 50 kilos of the stuff but instead opted for a small cheese knife.