Seattle, Washington

We stayed at Ft Lewis near Tacoma for five days. The campground is right on a lake.  We spent one day kayaking around, but didn't take a camera. We stopped at the beach area to swim and the playground for the kids to play before kayaking back. Asher is becoming a good paddler. Blackberry bushes right at our campsite made for a fun morning ritual of gathering fruit.

We spent one day in Seattle. First we went to the Pacific Science Center that sits just below the Space Needle. 

The reviews were a bit mixed, but I found it to be a fantastic center. They have so much to explore- dinosaurs, health exhibits, live animals and even a touchable tide pool featuring creatures from the nearby Puget Sound.

These naked mole rats were fun to watch run thru their habitat.

We always enjoy butterfly houses. This one gave out identification sheets, so the kids had fun identifying the ones they saw.

This exhibit really kept the kids attention for a long time. This teaches them about nutrition by having them build a full day of meals. They pick items from the conveyer belt, place them on the scanner then drag the item on screen to the plate. They could see the nutritional value of each item and as a meal. It was a fun activity.

This one was just funny to watch. They had to jump to pressurize this machine. 

Afterwards, pushing a button would shoot a ball into the air.

They're favorite activity was building their own rocket and then getting to shoot it off outside!

Afterwards we went to Seattle's famous Pike Place Market to walk around. Asher loved the fish smell, ha!

My aunt and cousin are big time into letter boxing. It's like geocaching, but instead of using GPS coordinates, you find the box using clues and instead of taking/leaving a chotchkie, you use rubber stamps. We've been talking about it for a long time, and decided the kids were finally ready. Normally you'd carve your own original stamp, but we took the easy route and picked some out at Hobby Lobby. 

This was our very first find!

Asher was pretty excited!

Once you find it, you press their stamp in your notebook (we use index cards) then sign in 

with your stamp to their logbook. Last replace the letterbox and mark it found on Atlas Quest. 

On our very last night, we were driving back to our site and noticed the alpenglow on Mt Rainier! Wow! This quick photo from the highway doesn't do it justice. The glow was magnificent! 

*I'm posting this about a month after our visit and Asher still 

talks about Rainier on nearly a daily basis. It's his favorite mountain now.