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More Washington including a day in Seattle

Monday we went to see a small slice of Olympic National Park. Love the native language on the sign!

Check out the cool fence outside the visitor center

We took a brief hike, saw lots of fungi

Tuesday we stopped by the Bainbridge Island Japanese-American Exclusion Memorial--this was the site where they were rounded up by the U.S. military and shipped out by ferry to end up at Manzanar and Minidoka




At the Bainbridge Island Historical Society, they had these two class photos hanging up, the first was 1942, the second was 1943.  Stark pictorial of what happened


We went to Olympia and rode the free Dash shuttle and saw the capitol building
 

Coolest thing inside: a Tiffany chandelier. Made of bronze, but a Tiffany creation nonetheless. Super ornate!



Still enjoying all the fall colors as we drive

We got to our campsite rather late that night and when we went to get out of the car, something skittered past and then stood and watched us. Can you see it???

Wednesday we had a long, full day starting with the Seattle Temple

The Space Needle

The glass floor wasn't as freaky as we expected and it rotates! You could stand there and look down and see everything below if you stay put long enough (I think it said it takes 45 minutes to go all the way around)

We saw Chihuly Garden and Glass








You can take one home.... so cheap!

Rode the monorail

Chanced upon the Waterfall Garden Park which was also the birthplace of the UPS



We went to the Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park--there are units in Canada too!

Walked through Chinatown



and ended up at the Pike Place Public Market

We saw the original Starbucks

And the gum wall--it was cleaned off in 2015 and hasn't filled up very much since then...

We got to drive out of Seattle in rain and rush hour traffic.  We managed to NOT get rained on all day long!
 
Friday we stopped by the Hanford division of the Manhattan Project National Historical Park--you can take a tour of the reactor, but we didn't have the 4 hours to devote to that

Cool radioactivity hands-on exhibit though (did you know Fiesta Ware is pretty radioactive? Yikes)

We stopped at the Whitman Mission National Historic Site, it is very well interpreted, has a small museum, a great film, and you can walk around the original site and up to the graves

Looking down at the millpond, which was to the left of the archeological foundations of the buildings of the mission

This is the "Great Grave" of all those who were killed there.

We didn't end up attending church today, we were without a car and it was a 30+ minute walk in impending rain in our Sunday clothes... we had "church" at home and enjoyed a low key day.

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