Seattle Day 2 – May 12, 2015

We awoke to another cool, gray day in Seattle, we think this is typical for the weather here, more cloudy days than sunny days.  We slept in a little today also since there is nothing open early in the morning,and we don’t need to get anywhere on a particular schedule.

We got ready and had our pastries for breakfast that we had purchased yesterday.  We also did a little rearranging of our clothes in the suitcases to get them divided up for equalizing the weight for flying home tomorrow evening.  We separated our last remaining clean clothes for tomorrow’s travel day so we could pack the remainder and not be searching for anything afterward.

We decided to go and visit the Museum of Flight located in Tukwila, just south of Seattle.  We did a trip routing on the King County Metro Website and found we could ride the city bus there directly.  We headed out and walked a block to the designated bus stop, and within a few minutes, bus No. 124 arrived and we hopped on and paid our fare with the Orca Card.

It was about a 35 minute bus ride through some less than beautiful sections of southern Seattle, but we did get to go by the football and baseball stadiums.  The fellow passengers were an interesting mix, most of them appeared to be less fortunate from an income perspective, and once we passed through some of the areas of town they were heading to, we could see why.

Eventually we got to the The Museum of Flight, which  is a private non-profit air and space museum, the largest on the West Coast.  It is located at a fairly large airport called the  King County International Airport, which is fairly close to the Seattle-Tacoma airport.  There were also some schedule airline flights in and out of this airport so we wondered if it had once been the major airport for Seattle.

The bus stop for the museum was right out in front, so it was not hard to find once we got off of the bus.  We headed into the building to purchase our tickets, and everyone was rushing outside to see some military jets take off.

Apparently there is some type of military presence at his airport, it appeared to be Air Force reserves.  We headed out with the crowd and saw two military jet fighters taxiing down to the other end of the runway.  They were just passing by when we got outside.  They appeared to be F-22 Raptors, which I think are the most current fighters the USA has.

It took them a while to get to the other end of the runway for take off, and I believe that were also waiting for some special clearance since we were located in the normal flight path for planes landing at the nearby Seattle-Tacoma Airport.  We finally saw them coming towards us, and it did not take long to see why they had to wait for clearances.  The first jet was in full after burner, and was only about fifty feet off the ground when it screamed by on a high speed pass, and then vent straight up into the clouds.

The the second jet came by, even lower to the ground but not in afterburner, and also headed straight up when it got next to the museum.  Apparently they do this for a little bit of a show for the museum guests.  They were so loud, and the sound was such a low rumbling frequency, that they actually made several car alarms go off on cars in the parking lot we were watching from.

Once that was over, we went into several of the large airplanes they have on display outside of the museum.  The fist was one of the test airplanes for the new Boeing 787 Dreamliner aircraft.  It was really nice inside, we could not believe how much more headroom was in the cabin based on other current passenger airplanes.  It was completely retired, and will never leave the museum,even though it was only a few years old. Of course, Boeing has a large presence in this area since their main plant is located about 25 miles north of Seattle.  We had though about touring that while we were here, but it is a little difficult to get to without a car.

The next plane we went into was the first Boeing 707 that had been outfitted for Air force One for President Eisenhower in 1959.  It was still in its original configuration, and as we walked through, we could see the various conference rooms, food preparation areas, and staff areas.  It was quite interesting, but looked fairly antique compared to what is used today.

We were apparently supposed to have tickets to visit the inside of these aircraft, but no one asked for them so we went in for free.  It started to rain, so we did not go in the last airplane, a retired Concord supersonic airliner.

We headed inside to look at what was in the museum complex and went ahead and purchased our tickets so we could see the other exhibits.  We toured the original Boeing building, which had been moved to this location as the start of the museum many years ago.  It was dedicated to the early years of flight and the initial development of airplanes.

Next, we had some lunch in the museum cafe, and then headed back outside to go into the Concord supersonic airliner since the rain had stopped.  It was fairly small inside, but really long.  The plane would only hold 100 passengers for the two and a half hour trip across the Atlantic Ocean.  from some of the posted information, we read that when this airplane was flown to the museum, on its last flight, it set a passenger airplane speed record for the flight from New York to Seattle in just over three hours.

There were a couple of other airplanes outside on display, but were not open for touring.  One was completely covered in white shrink wrap, apparently undergoing some restoration work.  It was an old B-29 from WWII.  I was a little disappointed we could not see it since I have never seen one of these in person before.  It was the airplane type that dropped the first atomic bomb.

We went back inside and went to the main exhibit area, and there were dozens of various airplanes on display, some of the floor, and many hanging from the ceiling.  It was impressive to see all of these airplanes in one area.  Next we visited an area in the museum set aside for space flight, and there were quite a number of different spacecraft on display, some of them were mock-ups, but some were original Apollo and Russian capsules.  There was also a mock up of one section of the International Space Station.

Next we headed for a section of the museum dedicated to military fighter aircraft of both WWI and WW2.  The entire second level was full of restored, and/or reproduction models of WWI airplanes.  One was an Italian airplane that was in original condition, and was over 100 years old.

The lower section of the area of the museum was for WWII fighter airplanes, mostly from the USA, but several from other countries such as Germany, Japan, and Russia.  There were a lot of other informational exhibits on display on both floors.

The last area of the museum was dedicated to more recent space flight.  There was a full size mock up of a space shuttle, but we could only go through the cargo bay.  The flight deck was by scheduled tour, and we did not see anyone there to ask about when the next tour would be.  There was also an actual Soyuz space capsule in the museum, and it was interesting to see.  They are really small inside, and look very cramped for three astronauts.  You could see some damage to the protective coating on the outside of the capsule from re-entry.

In total, we had spent about 4.5 hours at the museum and we both really enjoyed it.  It was one of those places where you could send an entire day if you wanted, but like other museums, you get a little overloaded with information after a few hours.  It had been a great thing to do on a cloudy, rainy day since it was almost entirely inside.

We headed back to the bus stop for our return to Downtown Seattle.  By this time, the weather was actually clearing some, the rain had stopped, and we got some brief glimpses of sunshine.  The ride back into town was more crowded than the ride here, it was about 4:30 PM and everyone was getting off of work or even some might have been going into downtown heading to work.  It was a completely different clientele than the morning ride.

We did stop and pick up and drop off a lot more bus riders than on the morning trip, so it took a little longer with those delays and the traffic in downtown.  Eventually we got to our stop and got off.  We went to the underground light rail station to add some funds to our Orca card, we were anticipating riding out to the REI store tomorrow, and needed fare for than plus the train ride to the airport.  We also scouted out the best entrance to the underground rail terminal since it spans underneath several stores, and the entrances are inside the stores themselves, or right next to the store entrances, so they can be a little difficult to find.  We also wanted to make sure there were either elevators or escalators since we will be going this route when we have our luggage heading to the airport.

Once we completed that, we walked down to the Market, which was closing up for the day.  We had missed seeing the “first” Starbucks Coffee shop on our visit there the other day.  It was a very small shop, and one would never have though that this shop would have led to the Starbucks craze that exists today.  there is literally about one Starbucks per block here in Seattle.

We headed back towards the hotel, and decided to walk a couple of blocks farther and around since we had not ever walked in the direction away from the waterfront before.  We were looking for a restaurant to go into to have some refreshments and appetizers for a light dinner.  We had some wine, cheese and crackers back in the room that we needed to consume before we leave tomorrow, so with that in mind, we did not need a full meal.  We found a restaurant called the Rock Bottom Brewery and Restaurant and went in to look at the menu.  there were several appetizers we though looked good, so we headed in and ordered a couple of local craft beers and split a large plate of Nachos.  The nachos were really good,as well as the beer.

After eating, we headed back to the hotel to do the rest of our packing and try to find out how to get to the REI store tomorrow.  We did call and ask for a late check-out and were told we could check out at 2:00 PM, which was nice.  That way, we can do some things in the morning before checking out.  We will still need to store our bags at the hotel since we do not need to head to the airport until about 7:30 PM tomorrow.

The weather for tomorrow is predicting more rain, so we need to figure out something to do where we will not be outside as much if it is raining.

After packing, we settled in to watch the view of the harbor from our room.  It does not get dark until about 8:45 PM, so it was nice to watch the ferry boats going by in the harbor.