Sunday, May 13, 2012

Pacific Northwest Trip May 2009 Day 11 Wednesday May 20

UPDATED: February 5, 2022

This is the eleventh of a series of posts dealing my fourth trip to Seattle and first of two trips that year. I’ve made minor corrections to these reports. Also, I’ve added additional thoughts with the hindsight of three years later or to add further clarification.

Well my long sleeved pants, my shoes, and my raincoat are soaked anyway so I shall indeed attempt Cougar Mountain, even though the zoo is about 4 km from downtown Issaquah. If it's closed due to the elements I'll just move on to the other shops that are outside the downtown core.

[NOW: The above was written in the morning; the rest I wrote in the evening.]

Believe it or not, camera problems again.  For the first part of the day I had to turn my camera off and on to take pics and the viewscreen (luckily the one I look at, not the one the camera "looks") at fogged up.  I suspect the culprit is water that got in during yesterday's thunderstorm.

I made it to Issaquah Transit Exchange and hiked to Cougar Mountain Zoological Park. Paradoxically it was the smallest zoo I visited this trip but probably the most fun.  Lots of macaws, most of whom had news to report.  Some have learned "Hi/Hello" (nope, none of them swore).  Two tigers (regular and Siberian) got up real close.  I hope the pics turned out; if not, will definitely return.

[NOW: It was a Sound Transit bus that I took to Issaquah, most likely 554. Other buses this day might have been the same. I believe the park is now called simply Cougar Mountain Zoo.]

Then I hiked back to close to where I started, then crossed the freeway to Funcoland (gone).  I also visited Barnes & Noble and Warehouse (latter gone), but lost a fair bit of time because the roads were confusing and even workers didn't seem to know the area (a Costco rep luckily did).  I did pass a stream visiting Barnes & Noble and back.  Crossing the freeway again (I should probably stress I did so where there were streetlights), I walked to Issaquah Commons, where I visited Blockbuster (bought a DVD), Soundsations (bought DVDs), and Target. 

[NOW: That Barnes & Noble, Soundsations, and that Blockbuster are now gone.]

I walked to the main downtown area of Issaquah which looked like it belonged in the 1950s.  I visited Maple Leaf Book Exchange plus another book store that was gone). I ran as fast as I could back to the transit exchange.  I didn't quite make it but managed to flag the bus down anyway. I then travelled to Mercer Island.  My camera went through a period where it worked more frequently, then stopped working (well, actually it went from picture-taking work, zoom not work to vice versa).

[NOW: Maple Leaf Exchange is now gone.]

Getting off at Mercer I worked out a gameplan in the hot sun.  This seems to have dried the camera some more.  It reached a level or working that it's since maintained: can take pics and zoom, can't do video, can display but not delete, display then move one ahead works but one backwards doesn't; the reverse is true for jumping 10 pics. 

It was around 2:30 so I decided to go to the first fast food place (non-ethnic) that I could find.  Unfortunately that was McDonald's, but they did have a nice outdoor area.

I visited Island Books, where they recommended a nearby thrift shop for used books, saying it was a little better than most thrift shops for used books.  Actually it was slightly below average on that score.  I then visited Hollywood Video, which it turns out I could have easily reached from McDonald's.  Heading back to Mercer Island Transit Center, I spotted a Quiznos, which would have been my first choice.

[NOW: Hollywood Video and that Quiznos are now closed].

I got a bus downtown.  I dropped off some stuff in my storage locker.  Some stuff dropped down last night so I took advantage of the time of day to fish most of it out (a couple coins and a memory card; I couldn't do that this morning without crawling over the person below me who was sleeping).  A wet shirt and smelly pair of wet socks I left outside my locker to dry are missing; I wouldn't think someone would want to steal wet and smelly stuff. 

I did a quick visit to Metsker Maps, then walked to Queen Anne district, where I revisited Underdawg Records, Twice Sold Tales (a woman took a photo of one of the disinterested cats without a reaction from the dealer so I took photos of the two cats too, and Easy Street Records (bought DVDs there for the first time this trip; usually I've found stuff on a number of occasions during a trip).

[NOW: Underdawg Records and that branch of Easy Street Records are now gone; that branch of Twice Sold Tales is now a cat-less Mercer Street Books.]

After a quick Gatorade stop at a grocery store (Metropolitan Market) I went to the International Fountain and spent a couple hours there.  I ate dinner at the McDonald’s with the sports motif and then walked downtown.

I visited FYE [since-answered question for friends deleted].  This particular FYE is on the top floor, so I went up to the top and took photos.  There's also a 4th(?) floor bridge from Park Place to Nordstorm so I used the bridge to snap some more aerial shots.  People visiting Seattle wanting aerial photos shouldn't overlook stuff like these, which are completely free, albeit not very high up (if height matters, go to Kerry Park, also free).  I visited Barnes & Noble at Park Place.  For the second day in a row my memory cards packages (probably them) set off the alarm.  Luckily the security there's pretty reasonable and I think they more or less know me as the guy with stuff in his backpack that sets off alarms, so no problem there.  I did a quick stop at Swerve, then wandered to Pike Place Market to take my daily evening photo of Rachel the Pig.  A guy was mooning his friends, and nearby a woman was modelling for a photo shoot. 

[NOW: That branch of FYE is now gone; I now recall it being in the lowest floor but could be wrong. The bridge was actually to the now closed downtown Macy's. The Park Place branch of Barnes & Noble and Swerve are also gone. The following was written later still in the evening]

Forgot to mention: I may have a case for returning my camera: aside from my belief that a single rainstorm should do that much damage to a camera, it's been used a few times: the camera's internal memory was full, and only one pic by me. Now granted most of the pics seem to be in the store (different dates largely, so there wasn't just one day that someone tried it out) the baby pics I'm less sure of. And I should have been told about the previous camera use upon purchase. 

The wet clothes turned up. I had forgotten that I had put them in a waterproof bag earlier.

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