Wheels on the Bus

We went on a trip yesterday, from Seattle to Mount Rainier, on an organised tour. The bus seemed to be full of people for the deep south - Mobile, Alabama: Miami, Florida and Mississippi to name a few. There was much discussion of grits and biscuits and gravy. I have no idea what these are but they sound so unappetising I'm not surprised they have never taken off. I can't quite imagine McDonalds with a burger and grits taking over the world.

American bus tours are very odd. The drivers are obsessed with toilets and food. When you get on the first thing you are told is when the next "restroom" will be (if you need a rest go to bed, if you need to pee call it a toilet!) and where the food stops will be. Then there are regular updates on the next peeing and eating opportunities. I genuinely don't understand this, Americans must have bladders the size of golf-balls. The rest of the trip was interesting, great scenery and beautiful views: as long as you ran to them. You see 90% of Americans, when visiting national parks and places of breathtaking beauty, never leave their cars. Actually they do leave their cars but only to go into the snack bar and restrooms at the park's visitors centre. Then they get back in the Hummer and drive back to the city. This means that the tours are designed around this system; so you find yourself driving on the bus for four hours, then get 40 minutes to enjoy the park and take a walk, then get back on the bus, drive for another 2 hours then get 15 minutes to walk around. Carol and I found ourselves literally sprinting round the hiking trails to try and take in the views then running back to the bus to find all the Americans already sitting there waiting to go. It didn't help that yesterday is was 90º. It was a bit annoying, especially when we realised we could have hired a convertible and done it ourselves for the same money as the tour. Admittedly we wouldn't have had a clue what we were looking at but at least we wouldn't have seen it flying by in a blur.

The National Park Service also has some habits that are a bit odd. For example they seem obsessed with building carparks and roads and visitor centres. Actually that makes perfect sense considering their market. The other thing is that they build these pull over spots so you can look at the view and then plant trees in front of them! Many times driving along there were beautiful views but when the driver pulled over there was nothing to see except the trees. Bizarre.

Seattle itself is really nice. It seems to be the weird hat and tattoo capital of the West Coast. I think I saw more inked skin and beanies, trilbies, peruvian caps, hombergs, bandanas and thirties flat caps in Seattle than in San Francisco. However it had a really bohemian feel to it and seems to have a young and groovy population too. Carol managed, in her usual way, to chat up the waitress in the bar last night and get loads of info about the cool places to go, the alternate scene on Freemont and Capital Hill. If we'd been staying longer it would have been great. The best thing for me was the traffic lights hanging on wires over the street just like in the movies. Everywhere else so far has had them on boring old poles. Something else I noticed was that, even though Seattle is the home of Microsoft, you still only see iPods and Apple stores. I know some of my readers will like that...well...Andrew.

It's also the home of some pretty cool people. For example Jimi Hendrix was from Seattle. We saw the guitar he played at Woodstock which I thought was brilliant. Heart are from Seattle as are Queensrhÿce, Sir Mix-A-Lot and Bing Crosby and the Kingsmen.

OK maybe only one cool person is from Seattle.