I took an excellent little trip to Washington state at the beginning of the month. It's been 7 years since the last time I've been. I love the area and wanted to go back sooner, but Covid made stuff a little more difficult and then life got in the way. But I finally got around to doing it!

The primary purpose of my visit was to attend Sketcherfest, a convention for urban/travel sketchers. I will talk about Sketcherfest in its own post because there's a lot I have to say about it. I spent the rest of the time exploring and drawing the Seattle area. And I got to hang out with Curi in meatspace!

Day 1: Walking around Redmond a lot

My flight arrived at around 11:00, about 40 minutes ahead of schedule... The Seattle light rail has been built out substantially since the last time I was there, so fortunately I didn't need to coordinate any rides and it was a wonderful train ride out to the east side of the Seattle metro. The train system is amazing and I can't say enough good things about it.

I didn't want to waste the rest of a nice day, so Curi showed me around the abundant greenness and wetness of Marymoor Park. There were lots of herons. I see herons pretty frequently at home, but never multiple at once.

It was a mostly clear day, so Lake Sammamish was a really vibrant shade of blue. I'm holding on to this photo to paint at a later time.

After much walking, we killed some time in the downtown area, got ice cream, etc. while waiting for the bus. Everything added up to 13 miles, factoring in the walking I did in the airport and from the train to the house I was staying at. (The house was in the middle of a very steep hill. I quickly learned there are many such hills in Washington.) Going to sea level makes me feel invincible and it wasn't 100 degrees like it is in Colorado, so I loved that I could walk so much without shriveling up into a husk in the sun.

Day 2: Seattle tourist day

I planned on hitting all the tourist-y downtown Seattle stuff on a weekday so it wouldn't be as annoying as on a weekend. And when I say all the tourist-y stuff...

I started the day at Pike Place with the biggest char siu bao I have ever seen and a cup of Rainier cherries. Carbs!

I wandered around the market for a while before I headed down through the gum wall to look at the water. There was too much of a crowd for me to comfortably draw either of the big public market signs, but I managed to get the Big-Ass Wheel of Seattle before too many people flooded the upper level walkway.

By lunchtime, the crowds were big enough that I didn't want to hang around the market anymore. I got shawarma at Falafel King because I love shawarma and I didn't have to stand in a giant line to get it.

Before leaving the market area, I stopped by Happy Hues so I could take advantage of having readily-available art without having to pay shipping. I got a stingray pancake pin, cowboy isopod sticker, and ink samples!!! Kitty Inkpot is a Chinese brand of interesting ink colors that is extremely hard to find in the US, so I knew I'd find a way to fit 4 ink vials into my liquids bag.

Before I left, I left a fish surprise in one of the testing sketchbooks. If you're ever at Happy Hues, go find him!

The trains were all backed up this day due to a power outage at UW, which complicated my plans to cover as much distance as possible. But I'm nothing if not persistent! I took a bus up to Capitol Hill to window shop and admire the rainbow crosswalks before walking down through Pioneer Square on my way to Chinatown. (If you are familiar with the Seattle area, you know this was extremely inefficient. See the above about feeling invincible at sea level.)

Chinatown/International District is my favorite part of the Seattle core because it's mostly off the tourist-y path (well, now that the World Cup finished, at least) and has the best food. I window shopped for a bit before settling down to paint at Hing Hay park. This was the first time I'd been able to get comfortable enough to paint something. The ping pong tables were on fire, so I got some free entertainment while I was working.

I had planned to get dinner in Chinatown, but the Falafel King is a generous king so I was still pretty full. That didn't stop me from getting a snack from another king of the dim sum variety on my way out. I was originally planning on taking the bus back to where I was staying, but it was rush hour and still pretty early.

I'm on vacation! What the hell, I should go look at the Space Needle!

The northbound trains were still running on schedule, so I could at least take the train back to Belltown instead of taking my 100th walk of the day. While I was at it, I decided to go the whole 9 yards and take the monorail to Seattle Center. I didn't get to experience it last time.

I really like the Space Needle as an object, hence there is no reason to pay money to go to the top of it. I walked over to International Fountain to eat my snack, enjoy the view, and draw some more. I tried coloring the trees with strokes in one direction instead of randomly scribbling like I usually do, and I really liked how it looked.

I finished the spread with a drawing of the dumplings I was eating. I think I would have liked it more if I hadn't colored all the grass in around the container, but oh well.

The monorail is a neat little vehicle. I like how it hasn't been updated cosmetically since its construction for the 1962 World's Fair, so on my trip back, I tried to draw the inside in the time it took to return to the station. That was not a lot of time.

I killed enough time at the Space Needle to get on the bus post-traffic, so it was smooth sailing getting out of the city. I walked 12 and a half miles, somehow less than the day before?

Day 3: Seattle slightly-less-tourist day

Curi came with me for a slightly less chaotic time at the Burke Museum. I'm a very slow museum-goer because I need to look at everything, so I knew I would probably only have time to go to one. I was glad it was this one.

The museum has three floors. The first floor has art and culture displays, with a focus on Pacific Northwest indigenous art. The second floor is the biology exhibit, which treats you to a lot of taxidermied and preserved animal specimens. And lots of skeletons! The second floor also contains a special exhibit about wool and weaving by tribes on Coast Salish. The third floor houses the paleontology and archaeology exhibits. Lots of cool fossils on the paleontology side, and the archaeology side focused on what you can learn about people based on the stuff they leave behind (in the modern and historical sense).

The Burke is a great little museum. The curators did a great job making the exhibits accessible to kids while still being interesting enough for adults. I also enjoyed that all the offices were exposed so you could see what the scientists were working on, but would I hate working in an office like that myself! Good for them. I only would've liked for the exhibits to be better lit. The lighting was dim, and there were harsh shadows that made it harder to study things in detail.

The museum wasn't busy at all, so Curi and I managed to squeeze a few drawings in. I drew a taxidermied deer head and a triceratops skull inside the museum. Later, I added a jar of preserved herrings and an ammonite shell that I took photos of. I liked the look of the pencil, so I left it instead of inking everything like I usually do.

And I colored a gay orca!

After the museum was a bus ride to Ballard, where we checked out the Carl S. English botanical garden and Ballard locks.

We got to see the fish ladder (mankind's greatest invention) with actual salmon in it! Keep in mind I'm landlocked so seeing real live salmon in the wild was a huge deal for me. Also, the fish ladder signage was the best thing ever. If the fish people know what's good for them they'll put this on every piece of merch possible. Give me the fish ladder merch.

I took a (not) quick detour to sketch the locks as a Flicka sailboat was coming through. I do not know how to draw boats but it works out fine if you draw lines in the vague suggestion of a boat, I think. I painted and lined my sketch later that night so we wouldn't be there all afternoon.

And of course I drew the fish ladder! Later, I added a quick scribble of a street in Ballard that I took a photo of. There are so many great power lines in Seattle. Most of the lines in Colorado are buried, which is very practical and safe but it makes street drawings a little less interesting.

We were hoping to squeeze Discovery Park in before dinner but that ended up being a bit ambitious... so that'll have to happen next time! This was a "light" walking day, just under 6 miles because the train was back to being functional. By now my knees and feet were reminding me I am, in fact, not invincible, but that was a problem for me after my vacation.

Day 4: CARS! and more plants

Another day with Curi. Our morning was occupied by the Redmond car show.

We went with the express purpose of drawing cars. It felt like the entire city of Redmond was at this event, so we camped on the upper level of the mall to do most of the drawing after admiring everything up close. It was a great angle to draw from, and the cars being so far away made it hard to overwork them. I drew three Alfa Romeos from above. (It was Italian car day, so there were a lot of Alfa Romeos.)

We went to the slightly less crowded parking lot to draw from eye level. For this I drew my favorite car in the lot, an olive green Corvette Stingray. Why did we keep making cars after this? And why doesn't every car look like this?

The owner came to watch me draw for a few minutes, which was fun and slightly terrifying. Knowing nothing about cars meant that I couldn't do a lot besides inform him that I think his car is really cool because it's 1) green and 2) a fun shape.

There were a lot of great cars, but the highlight of the show was definitely the Lamborghini tractor! Everyone cheered for it when it drove out of the mall.

Afterwards, we hopped on the train to the Bellevue Botanical Garden. It's nuts to me that this is a free location that you can just go to. I would be there constantly if I could. I didn't draw anything here, but I took some photos to come back to.

We had ebikatsu sando at Curi's house for dinner, which made me feel like the child in the after school shrimp Tiktok. I also painted a few trees in their backyard. I was experimenting with defining forms without pen, and I really liked it even if the framing I chose was a little awkward.

Even with all of the train usage, this was an 11 mile day! My knee wasn't thrilled that I worked it so hard after giving it the illusion of a break the day before, but it would get over it.

Day 5: Sketcherfest

To be discussed shortly! Like I said... there are a lot of thoughts. I was going to put them here until I started writing and realized it would double the length of this post.

Summary: Why did we ever stop doing trains

Both times I've been to the Seattle area I've been legitimately sad to leave. It's one of the only other places I could see myself living in besides Colorado, but I don't have Washington money. (I barely even have Colorado money as it is.) Sad!

This time I might have been even sadder because the public transportation was such a joy to use. Getting and reloading a card was easy, day passes were cheap, and they covered both trains and buses! The trains ran frequently and got me almost everywhere I needed to go; if they didn't, there were enough bus routes that I could hack something together. The first time I was in Seattle, I stayed in the middle of the city and walked almost everywhere, but the expanded transit routes made it so much easier and cheaper to stay outside the city. The train never got old. It was devastating knowing I'd have to go back to driving my car when I got home...

The weather was gorgeous the entire time too. I was hoping for rain and didn't get any, but it was in the 70s with a light breeze the whole time. It was significantly better than cooking in the Colorado sun.

I'm already looking forward to going back, hopefully in less than 7 years!