Road trip to Seattle

This was my first time in the north west, first time in Seattle. We had a lovely time. As we were driving to Washington, I learned a few things. First off, Idaho in August is the ugliest place on earth. It's yellow grass, black rock, wild fires, and it is the worst place to drive. Secondly, it is illegal to pump your own gas in the state of Oregon. They have reverted to the archaic tradition of gas station attendants. They hire people who are generally the type of people I would put at the top of my "Strangers Most Likely to Rob Me" list. Third, the eastern part of Washington looks an awful lot like Idaho. I have been trained to believe that the north west is a super green forest. When we crossed the border into Washington and it was still disgustingly dry and treeless, I was like, "Ha ha. What?" It became pretty and green after a while, but eastern Washington is a terrible place.

 Seattle has a lot of beautiful parks. The ducks that live in those parks have zero fear of people. They will eat out of your hand, we even got them jumping for food. Awesome.

 The city center has lots of cool stuff, including this funky modern art statue. And a great Science Center!

 This nice old guy working at the Science Center had some Madagascar Hissing Cockroaches for us to hold. Mine was either asleep or dead, cause it wasn't movin'!

 You probably can't see any of the butterflies in this picture, but we were in the butterfly habitat.

 Lee sits in a rocket thing...We pose with an animatronic dinosaur...This is a fun place!

 The King Tut exhibit was visiting the Seattle Science Center, so we took the opportunity to look at some very old Egyptian statues and treasure.

 This is the King Tut statue. Pretty rad. Posing in pictures wasn't allowed in the exhibit out of respect. I assume because they were scared an ancient curse or something. We got around that in one photo by having me walk around behind the mini sarcophagus that once housed King Tut's stomach!

 I'm the non-golden one in the background pretending not to pose.

 As you look at these two photos, you might be thinking that we are crazily tight rope biking. I assure you it was totally safe because of science.

 When Megan got off work (she's the pregnant one in the photo) She took us to the pier for some great seafood.

 We also saw the famous gum wall by Pike's Place Market.

 The gum was not as appetizing as these cupcakes from Cupcake Royale.

 We literally scraped and licked the wrappers clean.

 On Tuesday we went to the Seattle Temple. The GPS tried to kill us on the way there, but we managed to outsmart it.

After the Temple, we went on a tour of the Theo's chocolate factory. We tasted an 85% Cacao chocolate bar, as well as a milk chocolate coconut curry bar. We learned how chocolate is made and what it smells like in a chocolate factory. We also learned how expensive chocolate would be if farmers were actually paid real money and didn't involve child laborers. Short answer: a lot.

We had so much fun staying with Megan and Mitch, we really wished we could have stayed longer! It was fun playing games and hanging out with them. We are definitely going to have to go back and visit when little baby Aubree is born!