Chapter 1: Of All The Cheap, Lousy Ways To Save A Buck
You may have heard it said (once or twice) that it rains nine months out of the year in Seattle. Well, according to the internets, which are never wrong, Seattle gets rain 156 days on average, which means it’s actually less than half of the year.
It gets a total of 38 inches per year, which is less than the rainfall in New Orleans, Miami, and New York City. So there.
But perception is reality, and that’s especially true in these days of instant-reaction hot takes. If you shout something for long enough, it eventually becomes truth. Hey, hang on a second.
“I’M A BILLIONAIRE!”
Ok, that didn’t work, but the larger point remains. Everyone is convinced that the only time you can experience decent weather in Seattle (and by extension, the Pacific Northwest) is during the summer. And because everyone is convinced of this fact, summer is Soak The Tourists Season all over the area.
On top of that, many huge corporations and job creators have made their homes out that way—
Amazon, Microsoft, Nike—which has driving up the cost of living. When making reservations, I was in a bit of sticker shock. It felt like planning a trip to California all over again. I had to work very hard not to constantly spend $200/night for hotel rooms.
There were other issues with cost during the planning of the vacation as well. We almost always fly Southwest due to the lack of bag fees, which are a killer for 6 people. But as I mentioned in my previous TR, their low fares don’t seem so low compared to the competition anymore. Unless you want to fly at 3 a.m.. I have a very, very short list of things I would like to be doing at 3 a.m., and flying cross-country cramped in a Southwest jet is not one of them.
As it turned out, I was able to get a reasonable price on a Southwest flight for the trip home, but we ended up getting the best deal on the flight out by going with United Airlines. I have a credit card that earns frequent flier miles with them, and one of the perks is that I can get 2 free bags with them when I use it for the flight. So that helped offset costs somewhat. Every dollar counts, man.
We flew out of Baltimore (BWI) very early in the morning on July 24. Our flight was at 5:30 a.m., which just goes to show that no airline wants to let you get up at a reasonable hour. We had a layover at Chicago O’Hare, and I know what you’re thinking: O’Hare?? Bet that connecting flight was delayed.
Well, it was. But in a shocking twist, it was delayed LESS than an hour.
This was fine. We had enough time to grab some airport breakfast sandwiches for famished souls and recharge. We also had time enough for Julie and me to indulge in another perk from our credit card: once a year, I get two (2) free passes to a United Club in any airport, so peons like us can see how the other half lives. Julie and I abandoned our kids at the gate and wandered into the club to see what all the fuss was about.
It was pretty swanky in there. They had a nice little breakfast spread of fruit, cakes and muffins as well as coffee and an espresso machine. I grabbed a slice of pound cake and Julie made herself some sort of coffee creation.
We wandered around just to get a sense of what it was like to wait for a flight without being crammed amongst the unwashed masses, with 170 people fighting for the 35 chairs at the gate.
And after about ten minutes, we left. We had a plane to catch, after all. Plus, we remembered our kids were still out there.
In the end, we used our free club passes for 10 minutes of quiet, a cup of weak coffee, and some pound cake. I’m counting that as a win.
We had no issues with our flight to Seattle. Although there was quite a bit of cloud cover on the approach, it was neat to see some of the highest mountain peaks jutting through the clouds.
We landed at Sea-Tac airport somewhere around 11:00 a.m. West Coast time. And then I left the rest of my family at the airport to fend for themselves.
This was where Soak The Tourists Season was most apparent. I generally rent cars using my Costco membership, because their site gives some great discounts, and they work with multiple rental companies. I usually find a decent rate a few months out, make a reservation, and then check back frequently as the travel date gets closer. Most often, the rates will drop as companies get desperate to move their inventory. With no penalty for cancellation, I’ve often re-booked my car 4-5 times in advance of a trip as the rates keep dropping.
With Seattle, it was different. When I first checked, each company wanted something like $1,100 - $1,200 to rent a minivan for 2 weeks. No matter how often I checked back, the rates held steady. Then they started going up. I saw one get as high as $1,800. Clearly, demand was high.
However, when I widened my search to include all of Seattle (not just the airport), I found a Budget location downtown that would rent me a van for $550 for the two weeks. I could even return it at the airport.
The only problem was that I was at the airport, and the airport is nowhere near downtown. In order to make this work, I was going to have to be willing to take 1.5-2 hours out of my day to go pick up the van.
Was it worth two hours of my time to save $600? For me, the answer was yes. Because I’m cheap.
Scotty volunteered to go with me. As it turned out, the Seattle Light Rail system has a stop at the airport and another one that was only a 1-2 block walk to the Budget garage. It cost us about $5 apiece to ride. So I guess technically I only saved $590.
Julie and the other kids contented themselves with reading books/playing video games in the airport lounge while they waited. The light rail was great—a very easy ride into the city. We had no issues whatsoever. There wasn’t even a line at the rental counter. I signed my life away and then the agent went and retrieved the van for us.
It was…
…sigh…
A Dodge Caravan.
If the Toyota Sienna is the Rolex of minivans, then the Dodge Caravan would be the Casio. I did the standard walk-around looking for dents and dings and made sure the hamsters in the engine were fed, and then away we went. It was fairly painless getting out of the city, so I felt good about not letting the airport rental companies gouge us just for convenience. We picked up the rest of the family and then headed out towards Tacoma.
We stopped for a fast food lunch and ate in the van. Our drive was taking us completely around Puget Sound to the Olympic Peninsula, which included a drive across the Tacoma Narrows Bridge. This bridge is famous mostly due to its previous incarnation, better known as “Galloping Gertie”, which was built in 1940 and collapsed in the same year under 40-mph winds.
You might have seen the famous video in your high school physics class during a lesson on resonance and natural frequencies.
I cheerfully told the family all about the bridge collapse just before we drove over the channel. I’m sure they all appreciated the history lesson, as well as the chance to liven up a boring drive.
The plan was to drive up to the northern edge of the Olympic Peninsula and spend the night in the town of Sequim (pronounced
Skwim). Then we’d be in position to spend the next day exploring Olympic National Park. As it turned out, we got to Sequim around 3:00 p.m., which put us in an interesting situation. If we kept going, we could drive up to the visitor center at Hurricane Ridge, which is up in the Olympic Mountain range. But the visitor center closed at 5, so we had a limited window. If we made it, we’d save ourselves at least an hour of driving and backtracking the next morning.
Complicating matters was the layer of clouds that appeared to be hanging over the mountains. There was no guarantee that we’d be able to see anything once we drove up to the ridge.
We decided to go for it. Fortune favors the bold, and all that. Also, we didn’t have much else to do that afternoon.
Olympic National Park encompasses most of the peninsula that bears the same name, just shy of 1 million acres. It’s a very unique park, in that it encompasses several different types of ecosystems in that area—mountains, coastline, temperate forest, and rain forest. You can find wildly different climates, temperatures, and scenery depending on which part of the park you enter.
The Hurricane Ridge Visitor Center is in the mountains, about a 20-mile drive from the town of Port Angeles. It take roughly 45 minutes to make that drive, climbing up a long series of switchbacks. The mountains have an effect on the weather, which can change quickly in the park. Things looked ok for us when we reached the park entrance…
…but the road up into the mountains still appeared to be covered in clouds.
We kept going, though, and when we finally reached Hurricane Ridge, we were glad we did. The clouds had lifted just enough to give us a nice view of the Olympic Range. It was a nice spot for six jet-lagged travelers to breathe in some fresh air and enjoy snow-capped peaks almost 8,000 feet high.
We didn’t spend a great deal of time here. Just enough to wander the visitor center, pick up a Junior Ranger book for Drew, and enjoy the view. Along the way back, we stopped at an overlook. In the distance was the Strait of Juan de Fuca, which I encourage you to say out loud, because it’s really fun to say. Beyond that, we could make out Canada in the hazy distance. There were no signs that they were alerted to our presence, so our invasion later in the trip was still a go.
By this time, we’d been awake for at least 18 hours or so and we were starting to feel it. We drove back to Sequim and checked into the Holiday Inn Express there, and then walked across the parking lot to a
Black Bear Diner for dinner.
Section 3B, article (d) of the Oblivious Family Vacation Rules states that we must try never to eat at places that are readily available to us at home in Delaware, ruling out most chain restaurants. However, while the Black Bear is a chain restaurant, we don’t have any near us and had never been to one, so this was deemed not to be in violation of the rules. Plus, they serve breakfast all day, and eating breakfast for dinner is one of the underrated pleasures of life. We ordered mostly standard breakfast food items. The dishes of note were Scotty’s chicken and waffles, and Dave’s cinnamon roll french toast. All of the food was just fine and dandy, if not out-of-this-world amazing. We were all satisfied.
I especially appreciated this photo in the bathroom, providing definitive proof of what we all suspected was true.
Coming Up Next: More ecosystems than you can shake a stick at. Or, go ahead, shake a stick at them. See if they care.