Greetings from the early morning Amtrak Cascades Train #501 as I spend all day going to Portland stopping at the 3 remote intermediate stations as I get every Cascades train station in the state of Washington (still have not decided if I want to make the quick trip down to Eugene). The sign of my updates getting fewer is that my evenings in my Youth Hostel have become more and more social which is definitely true. The Green Tortoise has been a fun (but with really quiet dorm rooms) place to meet people but also get a quiet’s nights sleep and especially with the make your own eggs or pancake breakfasts and the two hostel dinners that I got with excellent conversation has far exceeded my expectations of a hostel.
My final two days in Seattle saw me doing less transit fanning. On Thursday I spent the morning taking a wonderful walk to the grade crossing that go through the rail yards just south of King Street Station where you can whiteness all of the equipment inside. Mid-morning I went back to the hostel to go on their dead guys tour visiting graves like those of Jimi Hendrix. The main reason I went though was to have a social day seeing a part of Seattle I wouldn’t normally see via the Green Tortoise Van, eating Indian Food and getting to know other travelers the majority of which were Australian. Out of the 9 others there were just two other Americans. I spent most of the evening with the same group of people as well, after we ate the simple but good homemade sauce and spaghetti.
Friday was a bit more transit oriented. I spent the morning going for a walk unrelated and in the afternoon had one of those trips that I just did not realize would be so slow taking Express Bus #578 at 1:30 to Pullayup that was really crowded leaving Seattle until we got to the Federal Way Parking Garage, when everyone got off leaving just about four of us for a very slow roundabout ride serving the Sounder stations in Sumner and Auburn. I finally got there at 2:55. The next bus to Tacoma was at 3:50 which meant I only had an hour before the final evening Sounder train back up to Seattle. It was a walk quickly hour, I took the Tacoma Link Streetcar to South 11th Station, and walked the entire line back jogging to the Sounder Station getting a few photos (but not having time to walk into the little station building) before just making my train at 5:00. I took this train, almost completely empty, as it was two days before back up to Kent (my original plan was too just spend half an hour between the two reverse peak trains there), which I wanted to revisit for more time and better weather. There I walked south the block to the original station building now used by the B.N. railway (that’s what the private property keep out signs said) to photograph it before getting more photos of the station and its surrounding parking garage. I then took another local to express King County Metro bus back to downtown Seattle which was fun since it ended by going through the transit tunnel and it was nice to get the perspective of it from a bus.