My family and I are going to spend a few days in Seattle after a tour in Alaska next month, so I’m curious what sort of family friendly stuff there is (read: won’t bore 8 and 10 year old boys) around there.
The boys like natural history type stuff, military/aviation/naval type stuff primarily. The Boeing Museum of Flight is already on the list, and so is the Olympic Natl. Park or Mt. Rainier Natl Park. We figure we’ll see Pike Place Market, Seattle Center and Space Needle in downtown Seattle as well.
What other things are there that might be fun that aren’t in every big city? (no zoos, for example).
When I went to Seattle I enjoyed the Underground Seattle immensely! I took @needscoffee with me, who is a native Seattlite, and IIRC she enjoyed it as well.
I also enjoyed the Pacific Science Center, namely the butterfly house, but it looks like it’s currently closed. But it’s re-opening in July so perhaps you will be there at the right time.
The Woodland Park Zoo is pretty cool. I wouldn’t scratch that off the list. It was the first zoo in the US to take animals out of cages. Certainly, there are barriers, but it’s been curated to at least give the impression of animals together. For example, The wolf packs appears to be mixed in with the elk, when in fact these is a “hidden” fence separating the two.
Note: Olympic and Rainer national parks are not close. I wouldn’t recommend either as a day trip. Keep in mind summer traffic can be horrendous, especially if trying to get back from the Olympics after about 10am on a Sunday.
There’s also the LeMay car museum in Tacoma. There’s actually two of them, both open to the public. On display at the family museum (among many other unique vehicles) is an original Tucker Torpedo.
Echoing this. My parents retired in Port Angeles, WA - wonderful area and right next to the ONP, but it takes a good 3 hours driving to get there from Seattle. You’d be spending 6+ hours driving, plus whatever time you could squeeze in the park itself. It’s like someone visiting San Francisco and thinking a day trip to Yosemite is possible. It is, but not advisable. Better to focus your time and attention on stuff closer/in town.
A nice enough patch of pretty Washington, with a meh vent of natural gas. You’ll never look at your gas range the same. Actually you will, since the flames are pretty much identical.
Memorable for an exhibit of a long-forgotten “find the most spherical rock on the beach contest” held by civic leaders determined to come up with something, anything to dissuade the people from suicide during the dreary winter mists.
Anyone know anything about the Kitsap Naval Base/Puget Sound Naval Shipyard museums or tours? My older son would probably spontaneously combust if he could see real Navy ships up close and personal.
I don’t know Seattle well at all, but as a visitor, I love the Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame (housed in the Museum of Popular Culture).
Maybe more fun for long-time fans than the youngsters, but there’s enough for them, too, I think. It’s not huge, so won’t take up too much time. It’s in a great Frank Gehry building, too.
They were surprisingly cool, both the locks themselves as well as the salmon ladder, especially since the sockeye had started running shortly beforehand- you could see them in the river itself, as well as in the ladder.
We also went whale-watching out of Edmonds- that was cool. We saw a pod of transient orcas hunting and playing, and we saw a mother/kid pair of humpback whales, as well as a whole bunch of seals and other sea life.
We took a day trip to Portland and visited my wife’s cousin- the OMSI was pretty cool, and the Cold War submarine they have moored there put on the best ship tour I’ve ever had.
We also went to Bremerton and saw the Turner Joy and the Puget Sound Naval Museum. Both were cool. Ferry ride back was fun too!
We did… I wish we’d known the hamburgers are so tiny- we’d have bought a couple each for the adults.
Alaska was amazing. Like nowhere else I’ve ever been; still has a sort of frontier feeling you don’t get in the US or Europe. And just different.
We put out of Edmonds (Puget Sound Express- highly recommend them!), and caught the orcas right near the Point Wilson Lighthouse- like maybe 300 meters offshore from there. We caught the humpbacks in the same general vicinity- maybe a kilometer or two northwest (as best I can tell from my pictures’ location tags).
It was very cool- the boat we were on was some sort of 40 knot semi-hydrofoil catamaran, and they had naturalists on board who explained the differences between transient and resident orcas, how they behave, what they eat, how they’re identified, etc… And the same for the humpbacks.
