Our office has moved. I used google to get the following directions:
[ul][li]Follow I-5 S to SW Spokane St Bridge in Seattle. Take the exit toward Harbor Island/11th Ave SW from Spokane St Viaduct/West Seattle Bridge[/li][li]Follow SW Spokane St Bridge to SW Manning St/SW Spokane St[/li][li]Continue straight onto SW Spokane St Bridge[/li][li]Slight left onto SW Manning St/SW Spokane St[/ul][/li]OK, I’ll put it into the NAV unit; but I’d like to know what’s coming. Specifically, I could not tell google that I intend to use the express lanes. Can I get to Harbor Island from the express lanes? I don’t actually know where they let out on the south send. Do the express lanes end before I get to the SW Spokane St. Bridge? If not, what exit do I take?
I’ve found “You can’t get there from here” is the default when driving around Seattle. “That bridge is closed.” “The ferry doesn’t leave for two hours.” Then there’s the double-deck highway by the waterfront plus the MANY fault lines going through the Sound that should restart nightmares in an LA boy like you (think Northridge '94) and keep you far away from it.
That, plus that suspicious bulge on the side of Mt Rainier (to be fair, it aims more at Tacoma), limits my communication with my family to telephone and email.
I was fin until the bridge. GPS told me ‘Keep right.’ What it didn’t tell me was to actually exit. So I went all the way across the bridge. Then I couldn’t turn around. I finally did get headed east, but wound up on a street taking me away from where I wanted to go. Backtracked a mile, and found SW Spokane St. Got to the building and… No Left Turn. Somehow I managed to find my way back to the northbound 5 and got off downtown at Seneca. Got back on the 5, went south to the bridge, and got off before I crossed it again. My little detour took about 40 minutes.
So I go to Alkai to get a Fatburger for lunch. Missed the turn (didn’t even see it) and wound up on the 99. Back downtown to Seneca. GPS led me back to the 99 and I’m back at the office.
I need to see if any of my coworkers know the area, and take them out for a drive so they can show me how to get here from Alkai.
And… Home again. Getting on the freeway was easier than expected. I made a left out of the far end of the public parking. It may not have been strictly legal, but I didn’t see any signs. Anyway, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it. Out of the office at 1700, and it’s 1942 now.
Mt Rainer is a hot stratovolcano 54 miles out of Seattle, but no bulge. It is however on the decade list… the top 20 volcano’s in the world that are most likely to postal in the next decade.
The best way to get around Seattle is to just drive around town when you have no plans or anyplace to be and get lost on purpose. This city has the single most messed up streets of any major city I have ever driven in.
Edit: to clarify you need to spend enough time in the city to learn the streets to a large extent, Denny and Stewart are 2 important ones as they cut through the whole city. also 2nd, 4th, and 5th ave.
I’ve lived in Seattle and Boston, and driven in both cities more times than I can count. Boston is far and away more difficult to drive and navigate in.
See, the deal is that there were two big families who originally settled Seattle. One laid out their streets parallel to the waterfront; the other laid out their streets in a strict north-south grid pattern. The intersections of the two = chaos.
I knew that. I thought it looked funny when I typed it. Just had a frustrating tour of Downtown Seattle and was just making a quick post before I crawled back under the mountain of data.
I have no idea what you’re talking about!
Back from lunch now. I went to the Chelan Diner. I made a left out of the parking lot and tried to make a right as the waitress told me to. Apparently, I wanted the next right because the road sent me the other way. I made a U-turn (technically, I turned left from something that might have been a side street, or it might have been a parking lot, or it might have just been some asphalt) and turned right to follow the sign that indicated Harbor Island.
You know that place where I couldn’t turn left yesterday morning? It’s where I made a left turn to go home yesterday. I went ahead and turned left there. It was past the yellow curb-sized barrier that divided the lanes, so I counted it as fair game. Supposedly there’s a way that you can continue a little way and make a circuit under a bridge to get going the right direction. Maybe I’ll try that next week.
Ranier looked to have a bulge that developed between the first time I went to Seattle in the 80s and when I went in the 90s. Maybe it’s gone now. Maybe I hallucinated it. I’m not the most reliable witness sometimes.
OK, it’s been a month. I can now make a legal right turn from the parking lot onto the street, and follow the signs for the U-turn route. I’ve found a Trader Joe’s and a KFC. Things are looking up. Except for one thing…
If I’m heading toward Seattle, the office is on the left of Spokane St. As I said, I’m not entirely sure it’s legal to turn left there. I’ve heard there’s a U-turn route, but I can’t seem to find it. The options are to take Right ramp or Left ramp. If I take Right ramp I end up on the 99 going who-knows-where. If I take Left ramp, I go up onto a freeway (there’s a sign for 99) and get off at 1st St. I can make a left on 1st, but it’s posted No Turns where I want to turn left onto Spokane St. The other day I went straight, found a place I could make a right, made another right, and then a left onto (what I assume is) 1st. Then I can make a right onto Spokane.
There’s got to be an easier way than that to turn around when you’re driving eastbound and you want to be going westbound.
Don’t worry about it. Baker will blow first. Since the whole range is interconnected, when one erupts the others quiet down. In the months before St Helens erupted, all eyes were on Baker. It was smoking and fuming. They had all kinds of equipment up there checking seismic activity. The Science Center had a whole room dedicated to watching for the Mt. Baker eruption.
There was seismic activity on all three, well four, Mt Hood was active too. So they were studying all of them, but all the money was on Baker.
As soon as Mt St. Helens erupted, everybody else went back to sleep.
