Snoqualmie excursion

Originally Posted:
Monday, August 4, 2008

1:32:00 AM CDT

Feeling Thoughtful

Hearing Soundtrack from DeLovely

I took a break from being a tourist this weekend, or at least tried to. I rented a car for the day and headed to Snoqualmie (Snow-quall-me) to the only scrapbook store I could find in the vicinity. I’m currently working on a scrapbook for Kat and Don, my Singaporean friends from SCAD. They took a road trip across the US from Savannah to San Francisco back in December/January and I thought it would be a neat way for them to have a memento of the trip. It took a while for us to get all the photos together, and this summer seemed like the ideal time to work on pulling it all together while I have free time in Seattle. Okay. I thought I was going to have free time. The problem that I’ve ran into is that my weekends have been taken up by being a tourist. Why did I ever think I was going to be bored here? Every time I turn around someone at work is saying, “You have to go to X” and so I spend days at work doing internet research on the place and scouting out my bus route to get there. Weeknights are taken up by making dinner, talking on the phone, posting to my blog, reading and just relaxing which is something that I have not been able to do in a long time. My good intentioned scrapbooking time went the way of the sands through the hourglass, taking a backseat to everything else I could do outdoors while enjoying the gorgeous weather and scenery. However, I decided that I wanted to not do anything significant this weekend and thought I’d spend the day at Hip 2 B Square just cutting and taping my heart away. But, my heart wasn’t in it. I didn’t feel well. This was the start of my earache and soon to be sinus infection. I kept plugging along and going through the motions, being a good crop neighbor to the lady sitting across from me at Hip 2 B Square, but I didn’t get much done. I finally took a break just to move around and maybe wake my mind up. The shop owner and the lady I was sitting across from told me to check out Snoqualmie Falls just up the road, so I did. I fell into being a tourist again. Yep, it was a waterfall. It was quite nice, but since visiting Hawaii I’ve become jaded to looking at waterfalls. Waterfalls and now totem poles. It’s one of those “seen one, seen them all” things. The first couple are really exciting, then each one after becomes “just another waterfall.” Seattle and the surrounding areas have a lot of totem poles. I didn’t expect to see one at every turn, but there they are, popping up in parks, on corners, and in gardens. They’ve become just another totem pole to me. I don’t like being like that because it means that I’m taking things for granted, but there are only so many waterfalls and totem poles that I can be awed by.

Snoqualmie, as a town, was definitely a two headed coin. On one side it has tons of brand new houses in planned communities featuring all the best things a child can have growing up. The people who live in all these picturesque homes are Microsoft employees. On the other side of the coin is small town America where the railroad tracks have old, rusting rail cars parked in their eternal resting place alongside the road, there are lots of inns and motels looking like they were built for a time when families packed into the station wagon and went to a national park for a vacation, and the biggest event in town would be the weekly little league game. I couldn’t help but think how miserable I would be in a town like this.