Winter 2019 – Part 2 The rescue act

For Part 1 of the blog please click here – https://wordpress.com/block-editor/post/signsofawanderer.travel.blog/307

Seattle

Plano was a busy work week, with that done. I flew out of DFW again to Seattle. With my sister staying in Mercer Island and that would be our place to crash for the weekend. The next day was going to be a whole day trip to Mt. Rainier National Park.

This was an organized tour by Customized tour and was quite a good one. Our tour guide was Joe an ex- MP who made the whole trip fun. Again November is not the best month to visit Seattle with it being cloudy and overcast throughout. It was a good 3 hour drive to Mt. Rainier National park with us trying to see if the clouds would part to give us a full view of the active volcano. Active, although the last time it erupted was sometime in the 1890’s

We were quickly heading higher into the mountains, the weather started becoming chilly, we crossed a couple of streams and stopped to see if we could get a better view of the now massive mountain. It’s amazing how the mountain just keeps getting bigger as we get closer 🙂

With some binoculars we could spot a couple of people with ski’s walking up the glaciers, a heck of a place to ski. Just as we were heading back to our bus our guide realized that we were locked out. The solution was to send my niece through the boot, climb onto the seat and get the keys. She got real excited with this entire episode that after she got in she forgot she needed to open the door for us!

With the rescue act complete, we proceed to our next destination. Narada falls, a beautiful stream at the top and a short hike down and you are greeted with this

We finally reached Paradise visitors center, a superb name for the place. It was cloudy and snowing a little. That meant we couldn’t see Mt. Rainier but the view was special nonetheless. We had lunch- mind you food can be expensive at the Visitor’s center. Wandered around a bit, played with snow and climbed back in for the long ride home!

Some snaps on the way down, my photos don’t do justice to the place. It’s pristine and you just feel like building a cabin somewhere here and settling down with a big mug of brew and just watch the clouds play with the mountains.

By the time we were back to Seattle it was past 7 PM, we were tired and decided to head back to Mercer Island and call it a day. The next day we just wandered around Mercer Island, a beautiful place.

We had hardly seen anything in Seattle but it was unfortunately time to leave and head to Chicago. Another work week calling!

Chicago

O’Hare being a large and busy airport welcomed us in typical fashion. We almost had to taxi from Milwaukee after landing and then had to wait an additional 10 mins for a bay since it was occupied. The cold embraced us wholeheartedly, although it was just -2 centigrade. The previous week was -20 so we missed the worst of it.

The first half of the week went by without much activity since my better half wasn’t with me. Fast forward a couple of days and started hitting the tourist spots

We headed to the Hancock tower mainly for the Tilt, worth doing it. You feel like your hanging out of the 94th floor (close to 1000 ft up) A walk down Michigan Avenue is also nice despite the cold. There are always the shops the wife will want to check out to keep you warm. A stop at Ghirardelli’s for some great hot chocolate helps cold! 🙂

Despite the cold we managed to click a couple of snaps,

With the work week complete, we had the whole of Saturday to do some sight seeing, we did the Shedd aquarium – the aquatic show is a must see!

The last bit we had been wanting to do was have the Palmer house brownie

Our Flight back to India was surprisingly on time and we landed back to India on time (there is a first time for everything). Although O’Hare was a mess as usual, it took us a good 40 mins to check-in and there was hardly any place close to the gate to sit. Maybe this was because it was Thanks giving week and a lot of people were heading back home for a vacation.

Overall a nice vacation but we just came back with the feeling, its not really a vacation if you are not completely off work. A dedicated 2 weeks would have been good. Yellow Stone, Yosemite national parks are on the to-do list. Maybe next time we will actually get to do it! Thank you for your patience and reading through this.

Wishing all of you a very happy and prosperous 2020!!