I Only Have 19 State Left to VIsit and 9 Years to do it!

The past week I knocked TWO states off of my list!  My goal is to visit all 50 states before I turn 40.  I counted tonight...I have 19 states left.  I'm 31.  Can I do it?  I sure hope so.  That will be another blog...

On to this blog...how I got two states in one trip.  Around Christmas Colleen asked me if we wanted to go to Hawaii with her and Ryan, she had found a great deal on condo in Kauai and it all seemed like a good deal.  So naturally, I said yes.  (Well after I talked to my Ryan).

I booked our flights for a reasonable price in March.  We were going to fly Denver to Seattle to San Diego to Kauai.  The problem I realized was that we landed in Seattle at 8 PM and didn't fly out again until 6 AM.  So I called the airline about changing the flights.  I could...for $350!!!  Yeah right!  The wonderful lady at Alaskan Airlines however did tell me that they have something called Same Day Confirmed and that I could call 6 hours before any flight and if there are open seats I can change my flight to those seats for $25 per person.  Now that is a price I can handle.  She gave me the times of all the flights for the day we were leaving.

At midnight I woke up and tried to check to see if we could change our flights.  It wasn't working or something.  So at 3 AM I woke up and tried again.  I could get us on the 9:30 AM flight!  Woot!  We had already booked a hotel for the night on Priceline for about $80.  I woke Ryan up at 6 AM so we could pack and head out.  We decided just to park our car at the airport because it's easier to have our own car than asking people to come and get us.  And we had a coupon for $5 a day, another sweet deal.  We parked and got on our plane with time to spare.  

On the flight to Seattle.

 While flying we saw some pretty amazing views of the mountains in Washington.  The guy who was sitting next to us was nice enough to snap a few pictures with my camera for me.

Once we landed in Seattle we headed to the hotel shuttles.  We had chosen an airport hotel with a 24 hour shuttle so we could get to the airport without any problem.  We were hoping for decent public transportation to get us around Seattle, but honestly, I hadn't really looked anything up before leaving.  :S 

The hotel it turns out was walking distance.  We waited longer for the shuttle than it actually took to get to the hotel.  We were checking in WAY early, so we figured our room wouldn't be ready, but it was.  We put our stuff in our room, put on our tennis shoes (& it was cool enough that Ryan actually put pants on!)  and headed to the front desk to see if there was easy public transportation.  There was!  Just had to walk...back to the airport.

We headed to the downtown area to go to the Pike Place Market.  One of the two things I knew we had to check out in Seattle.  We stopped first at Q'doba for lunch. 

I thought the market was pretty neat.  It smelled of fish!  Blech!  But it also smelled of flowers too.  So it balanced out...kind of. 

The crabs in the containers were alive an walking around.  The King Salmon, not so alive.  Fish is so gross.  Dead with eyes open.  Served in a manner that it still looks like it's alive.  I can't handle it.  I will eat salmon once in a while.  I can't cook it though.  I buy it and make Ryan cook it, then I only eat half of my piece.  I'm trying...it's not working.

Anyway, back to Seattle.  We walked around the market and took in the sights of it.  I enjoyed it.  Ryan later told me he could have done without the market.

After we decided we were done at the market, we wanted to head to the Space Needle.  We looked at our map and learned it was about a mile from where we were.  We walked it.  It was a pretty nice, shady walk.

And the Space Needle peaked out at us from behind some trees.  Ryan had already told me we weren't paying to go up in the needle, so I didn't ask.  Though I'm not sure that I needed to.  We went up in the Empire State Building in NYC, but that was Ryan's idea, and it was amazing, but I LOVE NYC.  I liked Seattle, but it isn't even close to NYC in my heart.  :) 

 So instead we walked around it.  There was a neat glass museum next to the Needle too, but we didn't want to pay to go in.  We had to get on a Metro Rail for about 2 minutes to get to the Light Rail station.  The Light Rail then took us to the airport and we headed back to the hotel.  We had a 6 AM flight out to San Diego, so we needed to head to the airport by 4:30 AM.  Thankfully it wasn't far.  We stopped for dinner at the hotel restaurant.  We weren't really hungry, but wanted a little substance, so we split a sandwich.

Next up...Day 1 in Kauai.