I’m back in Colorado, and while Kevin and I enjoyed our two-week-long Seattle sojourn, we unfortunately didn’t have the opportunity to spend a night or two in Oregon. Bummer, right? I always try to avoid putting off adventures (promises of “oh well, we’ll just go there next year!” never seem to materialize), but this time, we simply couldn’t squeeze Oregon into our busy schedule.
We did, however, manage to hike one of my favorite trails in the Seattle area last Thursday. North Bend’s Rattlesnake Ledge is undeniably one of the region’s more popular and crowded hikes, but the view is incredible and its convenience cannot be beat. Kevin and I took advantage of the first hint of blue skies in eight days and spent a wonderful two hours hiking to the summit and back; it’s an easy hike, but also rewarding. And, we discovered, not crowded at all on a weekday afternoon in mid-October.
As we climbed to the summit, I started to worry that the fog was going to be too thick to enjoy the view. Sure, there were glimmers of sunshine and blue sky, but the fog was dense and a few darker clouds threatened rain. Alas, when we made it to the summit, we were rewarded with the panorama featured in this week’s highlighted photograph. Not too shabby, eh?
In other news, I have a travel grievance to share with y’all: we arrived at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport on Saturday evening so we could head back home to Denver. Since we made it through security a whole hour before our flight was set to board, we decided we did in fact have more than enough time to eat dinner. Kevin opted for a noodle dish at a Japanese restaurant, while I was feeling lighter fare. I settled on a bagel.
This shouldn’t have come as a surprise to me, but my jaw dropped when I learned how much the bagel cost: two dollars for the bagel, and an additional two dollars for the butter. Two dollars for a swipe of butter! How ridiculous. Of course, I had to suck it up because (a) I was at an airport, where food options are far and few between; and (b) I didn’t feel like getting sick at 30,000 feet because I decided to devour two slices of Sbarro pizza thirty minutes before takeoff.
Even so, the idea of paying nearly four dollars and fifty cents (don’t forget tax!) for a mediocre buttered bagel struck me as absurd. I was reminded of my first-ever return flight home from Europe, back in the spring of 2015, when Kevin and I each payed twenty-odd USD for small, admittedly terrible pizzas at Iceland’s Keflavik International.
Oh, airport food – universally terrible. But it’s a small price to pay for the admittedly amazing opportunity to fly around the world.
