RADAR dome

Nadine's still training for her chairity ride and i'm enjoying the opportunity to ride a lot. Today our friend from HAM volunteering Bruce was going to join us along the way.

I rode to Westlake downtown (i learned that i can easily make it from door to train platform in under 9 minutes). I took light rail to Tukwila and rode down the hill to pick up the Green River Trail. I met Karen & Nadine at Fort Dent Park.

Along the trail we saw a raptor's nest. I wondered if it were an eagle's nest, but Nadine said it was probably Osprey.

I led them through South Park, a really cool working class neighborhood that they had never been in. It's often hard to navigate through the neighborhood because it's canted at an angle, hemmed in by river and freeway and has a huge hump of a hill in the middle; a hill so steep that even in Seattle it doesn't have streets up it, and that's saying something!

Here's one thing we saw in South Park!

We met Bruce at a nice little park at the site of an ancient settlement. The Duwamish have recently built a Long House there.

First stop was Jack Block Park, in West Seattle, along side Harbor Island. The newspapers had told us that a giant US Navy radar dome was in town from Alaska, being repaired and we wanted to take a look at it.

Bruce recently retired as a chief engineer on a ocean going container ship and he had lots of interesting things to teach us about the harbor and the ships!

timer shot group photo

We rode around to Alki and got some food, which we ate on the beach. After a surprise visit from Nadine's grandson and a surprise opportunity a flat-changing lesson (Karen had never changed a flat) we decided to abandon the trip down to Lincoln Park and headed back towards the city.

Bruce rode home towards Ballard, Karen & Nadine and i went up through the Pike Place market, stopping for a cookie of course, and i dropped them off at the light rail station where they hopped a train back down down to Tukwila.