Walking around Seattle's Pike Place Market seems like it would be Harry-Potterish enough (did you see our last post?). The art, statues, vendors, musicians, magicians, & flying fish spark your imagination…but World Spice Merchants definitely seals the deal. The shop is on the street that runs behind the market. It's also just up the street from the great Spanish & French groceries (you should check them out while you're there). Browsing this spice shop, whether you buy something or not, feels like visiting 3 continents in 20 minutes. Did I say feels? I meant smells - no wait, I guess it's both. There's something about this place that makes you feel like you're traveling. A lot of the spices, teas, & herbs come pre-packaged, some in nice little gift combos. The rest? Just grab a mini-clipboard with paper & pencil and start sniffing. Write down how many ounces you need, turn it in to the helpful dudes behind the counter, and they'll grind your order right up. So, sniff & shop, indulge your culinary imagination. Who knows? You might grab a magical spice that opens a door, sending you to Hogwarts!
~Paul & Amber ETC www.worldspice.com
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Just a quick photo set from Seattle's Pike Place Market. If you're a Seattle local (maybe a photographer?), every time you go there you probably tell yourself - "why don't I go there more often?"
Paul & Amber ETC P.S. The statues below are right side up:) As we continue to explore Washington state's San Juan Islands for an upcoming summer paddle, we had to stop by Roche Harbor. Located on San Juan Island, Roche Harbor has a lot going on. It is a popular port of entry for boats entering the US from Canada, especially in the summer. The historic buildings and lime kilns are what's left of a once thriving lime business - the company once upon a time shipped island lime to major west coast cities (read more about the industry in another ETC post here). If you head to Roche Harbor by car like we did, you'll arrive in 'town' after you drive under a big resort sign. We actually avoided the road at first - not knowing anything about the history of the Harbor - but eventually had no other choice, there is pretty much just one road. "I don't want to go to a resort," I said to my wife. "I want to go to Roche Harbor - the town." Well, it turns out the resort is the town. The town is the resort…hmmm…interesting. The details of how this town/resort came to be is best explained here & here. It's quite simple really. What you've basically got historically is a late 1800s British/American border feud that escalated into a full-blown pig war (with apparently only one casualty…uh…the pig), mixed later with a discovery of precious limestone and land claim by a Tacoma dude ("there's lime in them hills!"), a later purchase of the grounds by a family who started making the marina nice and welcoming guests, and then another purchase of the same land by some Seattle business folks who have really made the resort into, well, a resort. Roche Harbor went from native land, to a pig war zone, to a bustling lime operation, to a boatel (before the old hotel was refinished), to what it is now - a great marina and resort village with condos sprinkled amongst ruins & a few 100 year old buildings (including the iconic Hotel de Haro). Stuff to do. In the summer - tons. Check out the link here to see the varied activities available at the resort (we didn't see too much of this stuff, we were there in the winter/off-season). The things that concern us are the kayak launch area at the marina docks - it looks great - and the trail system that connects the resort to nearby British camp and beyond. We plan to return to check out both the British & American camps on foot - a pretty extensive trail system makes it all happen. The other thing we somehow missed? The creepy - I mean interesting - mausoleum of the former Lime company founder from back in the day (read about it here…guess who's ashes are locked in the seats of the chairs?). Maybe we'll check it out at the summer solstice and see if the light on the table rumor is true…oh ya - by the way, there is a light on the table rumor...interesting. So much history! I'll admit - once I found out the town was actually a resort I almost wrote it off as, well, a made-up town that is just a resort (Seaside Florida anyone?). After reading up on the history behind the place I am officially blown away. I know we'll be back on foot and by kayak. You should go too! Meet you at the mausoleum at solstice?
~Paul & Amber ETC www.rocheharbor.com The preparations have begun! We've decided to start exploring the San Juan Islands, a little groundwork for an upcoming summer multi-day paddle (a.k.a. ETC paddles the San Juan Islands!). We started by visiting the most populous and second largest of the islands - San Juan Island. It's the offseason - a perfect for time for exploration. We dined, stayed at a nice little hotel in Friday Harbor (review here), shopped, and crisscrossed the island looking for kayak put-ins and other interesting sites. While driving around to the west side of the island we stumbled upon Lime Kiln Point State Park. Before we get into all that, a little about the islands. The San Juans are an archipelago in the NW corner of our state of Washington. They're kinda like cold water Virgin Islands - hilly, some close to each other, some far, some big, some small, some inhabited, some not, a great place for sailing and anchoring in protective coves. They're boxed in by a bunch of straits - Juan de Fuca to the south, Haro to the west, Rosario to the east, and Boundary Pass (and eventually the Strait of Georgia) to the north. If you live in Seattle and have a boat (like us), the Shilshole to San Juan trip in the summer is the thing to do. Since we were visiting by land this time we took the car from Seattle north to Anacortes and ferried over to San Juan Island. We highly recommend checking the ferry schedule before you go, that is the trickiest part to getting here. I'm sure the summer ferries are packed…heck, we even left on a Monday afternoon and still almost missed the boat because it was crowded. Also, on your return, if your boat is coming from Canada and picking you up in Friday Harbor you'll have to go through a border crossing once you get to Anacortes (even though you didn't even leave the ol' USA). We arrived at the town of Friday Harbor after about an hour boat ride. We drove right through and set out to explore the island. We saw signs for Lime Kiln Point State Park and decided to park and check the place out. We were glad we stopped! It was Veterans Day weekend so admission was free (otherwise you'd have to have a Discover Pass to park). We set off down the shoreline trail & explored the Lime Kiln Point lighthouse - a favorite destination for tourists & whale watchers (check the board up front for listings of the most recent whale sightings). It overlooks the Haro Strait and that's Canada in the distance! Then it gets interesting. Leave it to this guy to set out exploring Lime Kiln Point State Park without really knowing what a lime kiln is in the first place. I do, however, follow directions pretty well and noticed the signs leading to the kiln. A loop trail connects the shoreline trail (lighthouse) to the upland trail (kiln). Holy lime kiln batman! Long story short - limestone is a rock & is partly formed of marine skeletons…yep, that's right…skeletons. Limestone can be baked down to pure lime. When you clearcut the forests of San Juan island, as they did back in the day, and stoke a super hot fire in a stone kiln (the tall stone thing in all of these pictures), you can heat limestone up to a point where it separates (from impurities and the other stuff it's made of). The separated pure lime from here was, in the early 1900s, some of the purest lime in the world…why did that matter? Well steel, among other things like plaster, cement, & paper are made using lime. Steel made from NW lime was actually used to rebuild buildings in San Francisco after their great earthquake/fire of 1906! So basically it was - mine the lime, transfer down to the top of the kiln with cable cars (sounds like a great Indiana Jones cable-car scene here), cut down almost every tree on the island, stoke the fire, bake & separate the lime, toss lime that didn't properly separate over your shoulder, move the lime into barrels onto boats & move onto nearby ships in Friday Harbor, then ship the product to warehouses in Seattle/Vancouver/Portland. Eventually some of this lime was then shipped south, made into steel, & used to rebuild San Fran…crazy NW fun-facts! That's not bird poo. No seriously, I thought it was bird poo. We have some giant birds and bird migrations in Washington and I thought they may have all congregated on this one rock. Turns out that those historical workers we were talking about only liked to use a certain size of limestone. They broke it up, blew it up, and discarded the little sizes they couldn't use. Remember that unseparated limestone they tossed over their shoulders? To this day - lime leftovers are all over the place near the kiln (like the giant white rock pictured above). As you can see - Lime Kiln Point State Park is definitely worth the time. Downside? Well, if you came to San Juan Island as a passenger (to avoid the crowded summer car ferries) it would be quite a trek across the island to get to the park.
Upsides? The shoreline and upland trails are pretty short and easy (although there is a little staircase of doom by the kiln), the sights are historic and amazing, there's a lighthouse, & you have a great chance to see some the orca pods cruising just off the point. Cool stuff. ~Paul & Amber ETC |
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