20th anniversary photos

To celebrate 20 years of marriage, Megan and I decided to spend a few days in Seattle at the beginning of May. It was the first time we've visited Seattle without the dogs (thanks to Aaron for taking care of them!), and we kept a low profile and didn't fill our days and nights with non-stop social plans like we usually do when we visit Seattle. We stayed at a centrally located historic hotel and took long walks around downtown and along the waterfront. This post contains some photos and memories from our trip.

A stop in the Tri-Cities

We took a detour on the way to Seattle to spend a night in Richland, Washington with our friends Craig and Elane.

We left mid-morning to drive up through Yakima to Seattle, and decided to check out WaterFire Restaurant & Bar. It's something you wouldn't expect to find in Yakima, a high-end seafood place, and it's way out on the west side of the airport, far from the center of town. We mentioned to the hostess that we were traveling for our anniversary, and they surprised us later with a dessert treat.

The Mayflower Park Hotel

When we arrived in Seattle, we checked into the Mayflower Park Hotel, built in 1927. We had visited Oliver's cocktail bar in the Mayflower a few times when we lived in Seattle, and it's a convenient location next to Westlake Center, across from the old Macy's building. (Or for old-timers like me, the old Bon Marche building.)

For much of the 1900s, Seattle had a law on the books that prohibited bars from serving hard liquor in locations visible from the sidewalk. The Mayflower opened their new cocktail lounge, Oliver's, shortly after that law was repealed in 1976, and the design featured floor-to-ceiling windows in celebration of being Seattle's first "daylight bar."

Canlis

This trip included lots of eating out at the kinds of restaurants we can't find close to our home in Butte, and Saturday night was the pinnacle of those dining experiences. Canlis is Seattle's most famous and respected (and probably most expensive) restaurant, and after hearing about it for decades, we decided to check it out. If you're not familiar with the Canlis story, you can read about it here.

We arrived early for our 8:00 reservation, so we had a drink in the bar first. The bartender was great, the piano player was great, and our evening got off to a great start.

The piano player – who I think may be a long-time fixture, although I didn't catch his name – did tasteful jazz piano arrangements of popular songs, with lots of alternative voicings, chord substitutions, and passing tones so that each tune sounded instantly familiar but it sometimes took awhile to realize exactly what it was. Three songs I recognized after he had been playing them a while: Great Gig in the Sky by Pink Floyd, Sultans of Swing by Dire Straits, and A Bar Song (Tipsy) by Shaboozey. Good stuff.

FYI, if you'd like to check out Canlis but don't want to spend a fortune, we learned that as long as you're following the dress code (sport coats or suits for men), you can show up without a reservation and have drinks and appetizers in the bar. An employee told us that showing up around 5PM or 7PM is best these days, so we may be doing that next time we're in town.

The standard Canlis dinner is six courses – you pick three, and they pick three – but we added a seventh course of the classic Canlis salad from the 1950s.

Nancy's postcard

At the end of our dinner, they gave us a postcard and asked us to fill it out to anyone we'd like, and they would put postage on it and mail it. A marketing gimmick, to be sure, but we liked the postcard and decided we wanted to keep it as a souvenir. So we addressed it to Nancy at our home in Butte. Thankfully, it showed up two days after Nancy had returned home safely from five days in the wilderness of the Pioneer Mountains. It would have been pretty creepy to receive a "wish you were here" postcard to Nancy while we were worried sick about her whereabouts and safety.

Along the waterfront

Sunday morning, we took a walk down through Pike Place Market and along the waterfront, stopping for a breakfast of avocado toast and lox and bagels at a place on First Avenue.

We decided to play tourist and check out the Sasquatch Mountain immersive VR experience on Pier 57. As a guy who drives a lot of mountain roads, I have to admit they got my heart rate up a bit with the simulations of crashing through trees and teetering on cliff edges.

Visiting Mom

We visited my Mom at her home at Wesley Terrace, and both of my brothers were there, so we had a little family reunion for Mom before Mother's Day. A few friends dropped in, too.

The Spot

Megan and I love hanging out in bars, especially unassuming ones, and the unassuming bar we hung out in more than any other during our 15 years together in Seattle was the Spot, south of Renton. So of course we had to drop in while we were in the area.

It wasn't the same without Jamie and Alice waiting in the truck when we came out, but we took a late-night drive past some of our favorite places we used to walk with them in the Seattle area, meandering back up through the Rainier Valley to our hotel downtown.

Rooftop bar

Megan went into work on Monday, catching the new light rail from Westlake Center – next to our hotel downtown – directly to the Microsoft campus in Redmond. Well, theoretically. As it turned out, there was some sort of problem with the train and it left passengers stranded partway there, with nobody seeming to know how long the delay would be, so Megan ended up taking a $60 Uber ride to complete her journey. Come on, Sound Transit, get your act together!

Monday evening, we decided to find a rooftop bar. Based on online reviews, we settled on the Seattle Next Level rooftop bar at Fogo De Chão. It wasn't quite what we expected, being perched on a third floor balcony instead of the top of the building, but we enjoyed drinks and a charcuterie board.

A crow takes offense

We left Seattle Next Level just before sunset, to walk down to the waterfront for a nightcap, and as passed the historic Northern Life Tower, Seattle's oldest art deco building, I thought it would be fun to get a drone photo of us walking across Third Avenue in front of it. This turned into more fun than I had anticipated.

I launched the drone from the corner of Third and University, and made it hover about 20 feet above University Street to take a photo every 2 seconds while we walked across the street. While I was getting the drone into position, a crow flew past close to it, but I didn't think much of it. Birds often show an interest in the drone when it takes off, and they usually lose interest after briefly checking it out.

Then, just after the photo above, the crow returned and flew past the drone so close they made it rock back and forth, letting out a loud scream as it passed. The crow was attacking the drone! I tried to land it quickly, but when I saw the crow diving toward it again, I stomped my foot and screamed. That had the intended effect – startling and distracting the crow momentarily – and also an unintended effect – a woman on the sidewalk across the street turned and ran away from us, as if fleeing a crazy person. Sorry about that, Ma'am.

I got the drone landed and put it in my camera bag, but the crow continued to yell at us. It swooped so close to my head once that I could feel the blast of air as it passed, so we walked over under an awning, but dove under the awnings and buzzed Megan's head, yelling at us the whole time.

When we got to the crowded sidewalk on 1st Avenue, the crow seemed to lose interest (perhaps because it lost sight of us in the crowd), and we hurried down to the waterfront and then walked to the Edgewater for a nightcap while darkness fell. What a memorable evening.

Final follow-up with my knee surgeon

on Tuesday morning, I had a one-year follow-up with the surgeon who replaced my right knee last year, Dr. Bruckner at Proliance Sports Medicine. He's retiring this summer, so I'll probably never see him again, but what a difference he has made in my life. Despite some drama with the infection I had last fall (which had nothing to do with his work), I feel like the two hips and a knee that he has replaced are the three best-functioning joints in my body. For the last ten years, he has consistently encouraged me to work out hard, lift plenty of weight, and trust my replaced joints to be every bit as strong as healthy, unreplaced joints. That attitude, combined with his high-quality work, is why I'm stronger now than I was ten years ago, which is a great feeling.

We had a nice visit, and our discussion was more about enjoying retirement (mine and his) than the details of my knee. As a final gift, he gave me some very specific advice about how to take care of my left knee going forward, to minimize the chance of ever needing that one replaced in the future. He also gave me the names of several surgeons he recommends, just in case.

Sushi and cocktails

For the final evening of our trip, we decided on sushi from Japonessa, a popular sushi restaurant downtown that we've never been to before, and cocktails at Zig Zag Cafe, a popular cocktail bar near Pike Place Market featuring talented bartenders, a huge liquor selection, and live jazz music.

After a fun vacation, it was time to drive the Jamie Samoyed Memorial Highway (aka I-90) back to our home in Montana. Happy 20th, Megan!

“Happiness consists of living each day as if it were the first day of your honeymoon and the last day of your vacation.” – Leo Tolstoy