Amtrak Adventure - Day 25 - Seattle

Day 25 brought rain. Given it was our first major wet day in the whole trip, we couldn’t really complain, but of course it had to happen on the day when we planned to visit the Olympic Sculpture Park, an outdoor exhibition near the river. 

We abandoned our first attempt to get there in favor of tea and donuts in the Top Pot Café on 6^th Avenue and our second by dropping back into Pike Place Market, each time getting a little closer to our destination before the skies opened up again.

At this point we decided it was a good time to visit the Frye Art Museum. At least that would be indoors. It might have helped if we had looked it up online before we set off because not only did we walk in the wrong direction only to discover that it wasn’t as far from our hotel as we’d thought, but it also turned out to be closed on a Monday! The day was definitely not getting off to a good start.

Fortunately, the weather did eventually clear up enough for us to make it to the park without getting drenched.  I’m not sure whether we missed some of the exhibits, but I was surprised at how few sculptures there were – we only found about six. My favorite was one of a face, so stunning it made all the effort getting there worthwhile.

I couldn’t quite work out whether this bench was part of the exhibition or just an elaborate park seat. There was no sign saying you couldn’t sit on it, but as it was wet I wasn’t tempted to anyway.

And at first I couldn’t work out what this was supposed to be, but then seen from another side I guessed it might be a bird.

But this one baffled me completely. (And no, we couldn’t find any placards nearby explaining what they were supposed to represent.)

With only a few hours left before we had to head to the station for the next leg of our journey we stopped in on the Klondike Gold Rush Museum. This fascinating museum told how Seattle prospered by providing goods to prospectors for their trips to the Klondike during the gold rush.

Old lists were posted of all the suggested supplies prospectors needed to take with them together with the approximate costs: appropriate clothing for the weather, tools and tents, and food for a year - at today’s prices it would come to about ten thousand dollars! – a huge investment which for many would not pay off. 

The stories of individual prospectors gave a firsthand account of how difficult conditions were and the courage and determination that were needed to undertake such an arduous task. Surprisingly for the time, there were numerous women among the prospectors. While many were wives traveling with their husbands, others were single women as determined as the men to make their fortune.  And some did.

Too soon, it was time to head to the station for the next leg of our journey – an overnight train to West Glacier, Montana.

It had been fun to visit Seattle, but now we were looking forward to a complete change of pace in the splendor of Glacier National Park.