Thursday, July 22, 2010

Seattle Touring - The Flight In

Well, I've spent my limited blog time recently by updating my hiking blog with Mount Rainier posts, and now am finally getting back to this blog to post about my few days in Seattle. I had already posted about the race and the events leading up to it.

On June 24, I got up at 4AM to head to the airport. Coach Chuck and his wife gave me a ride there. Upon arising, I found a message from Roanoke teammate Kathryn that her flight was cancelled and she would not be arriving until that night, so we should not plan on meeting her at O'Hare Airport. That was disappointing, as we had looked forward to meeting another Virginia teammate.

Other than that, the flight was uneventful. Everything left on time, and I got to start reading "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo." On the final approach to Seattle, I snapped some photos of my first views of the great Pacific Northwest and Seattle.

The clouds opened up a bit on the approach to the airport to show some views of the Cascades. The snow on the peaks made me wonder about how my hiking at Rainier would be. I found out a few days later that everything there higher than about 4,500 feet altitude would be snow covered - much snowier than these mountains were.


I was excited to see this view of the Space Needle, a true Seattle landmark.

We came right in over the center city.

I knew from studying the race route that on June 26th, I would be running right past Safeco and Qwest Fields near the end of the race.

View of Puget Sound and part of the port area

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