Spontaneity is not my strong suit. In fact, if my family were to describe my best qualities, I’m fairly certain the words “easygoing” and “flexible” would not make the list. So they were all slightly stunned when I decided, with only five days’ notice, that we were driving to Seattle for the long weekend. Road trip!

Seattle is having uncharacteristically hot and sunny weather, and at least for now has no trace of wildfire smoke (take that, Kelowna!) so we really lucked out. The weather made our tour of the baseball stadium a real treat. We briefly considered going to an actual game, but that would cost four times more and keep Brayden’s attention for half as long, so the tour seemed like a better bet. And it was pretty cool: we got to go on the field, in the dugout, in the press box, and through a few other places the general public has no access to. We had to skip the locker room due to it being a game day, but you can’t win ’em all.

After lunch at a very neat Irish pub (which even featured a digital countdown to the next St. Patrick’s Day), we took another tour, this one of the underground passageways beneath the city. It turns out that Seattle was originally built on soggy tideflats. After a major fire leveled the city in 1889, officials decided to raise up the streets to get away from the muck: they built eight-foot retaining walls on either side of the streets and filled in the space between them, effectively raising the streets up by one storey and creating a series of hollow tunnels underneath where the buildings’ first floors used to be. Justin was a little thrown by the guide’s sense of humour (the guy kept joking about giant rats…sigh) but we all found it pretty fascinating in the end.

We’re currently debating whether to go out for dinner or take advantage of the free beer and snacks by the hotel pool. Decisions, decisions…

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