Jovon Everett: Seattle Recap

Monday, November 5th

I loved Seattle. I didn't want to go. Of course, the tour leaves the not-so-great cities, so it must also leave my favorite. I was on a plane to Boise at 6:45 AM on Monday.

The last week in Seattle was the best week of the tour. Sheila Marie arrived on Friday the 19th and we really took advantage of a week together in a wonderful place. Her week long visit will need more than one blog entry - so this is the first in the series. We'll begin before her arrival:

In preparation for Ken's departure to Australia (he'll be in Oz until the second week in December - they're launching an Australian Tour of Spamalot and Ken was tapped to help get it off the ground) we welcomed Lisa Ann Chernoff to Team Spamalot Stage Management. She's a friend of Francesca's and is currently based in Seattle. Lisa joined us in the middle of the Seattle engagement and will stay with us through East Lansing. She is great and we're all pleased to have her with us.

Stage Management in Ken's absence: JV, Lisa and Francesca

Sheila arrived late Friday night. She had been in New Orleans on business Wednesday and Thursday, went in to the office on Friday, took the train to Newark Friday afternoon and made the cross-country flight Friday evening. Suffice to say, she was pretty beat by the time she made it to the apartment on Friday.

Saturday we headed straight for the sidewalk creperie. They whip up both sweet and savory crepes to order from a little stand on the street under the Washington State Convention Center. I must have eaten at least a half dozen crepes during my stay.

From there, we made a quick visit to the market. We shopped a bit for the ingredients to some of Sheila's favorite meals and took in the sights.

The first Starbucks...

Of course, I had two shows on Saturday so our sight-seeing had to be cut short. Which was fine with Sheila Marie, I think, as she was still a bit jet lagged. After the second show, however, Mitchell had arranged a trip to a haunted house. On the fall social calendar, a haunted house is a can't miss event for my wife. The haunted house Mitchell chose was run by a local radio station. There was an enormous line, but we skipped the line as VIPs! We had a great time shuffling along in the semi-dark waiting for masked teenagers to jump out at us.

Bright and early on Monday morning Sheila Marie and I took off in a rental car for points north. We drove up to Anacortes where we boarded a great big ferry boat for the hour ride to Friday Harbor. We ate breakfast on the island and did some poking around in the shops until the captain of our whale watching boat called. When I booked the whale watching trip, there weren't enough reservations to guarantee a trip. The night before, the charter company called and said that another couple had signed up - we might be able to go out on a small boat. Monday morning, Captain Ivan called and let us know we would be headed out on the big boat!

The whale watching trip was, in a word, amazing. There are 3 pods of resident orcas in the Puget Sound area. Each pod is a family of about 25 whales headed by its oldest female. The resident orcas eat fish - the salmon that make the Pacific Northwest so famous are their favorite food. There are also some transient orcas that move in and out of the Puget Sound. They don't hang out with their families, travel in smaller groups, and eat seals and other bigger animals. On Monday, there were no transient orcas around, but all three pods of resident orcas were all hanging out together - meaning that there were around 80 whales all in close proximity!!! Captain Ivan motored us quite a ways south to check out the whales. Along the way, we stopped to see Harbor Seals and Stellar Sea Lions lounging on the rocks. The seals looked puppies with their long whiskers and cute faces. The sea lions were enormous and sort of scary looking. The male sea lions grow to more than 9 feet in length and more than 2,000 pounds!

These are the harbor seals sunning on a rock. (JB, our naturalist, took these photos with his long lens.) Seals can't turn their flippers around to pull themselves along the beach, so they're very awkward when they're on land.

A Stellar Sea Lion. They're the biggest member of the seal family. They growl like bears - even from more than a hundred yards away, we could hear them clearly.

When we reached the whales - they were everywhere. The captain cut the motor on the flat seas under sunny skies and you could hear the whales blowing all around us. The crew lowered the hydrophone and we could here the whales clicking and squealing in every direction. We must have seen more than 50 individual whales. Some of them we saw often enough that I began to be able to identify them (the markings on their tails, the shape of their dorsal fin and their white body patterns are all a little different).

Too soon, it was time to head back to port. We must have spent nearly two hours with the whales, but it flew by. On the way back to port, there was a bald eagle perched on the rocks. It's easy to forget how big a bald eagle is, but when you see one, it's a very impressive animal! (Fun fact: an eagle's back talon contains a tendon that acts as a ratchet. Once the eagle seizes its prey, the "ratchet" is engaged. The bird can not let go of whatever it is holding until it sets the prey on solid ground and relieves the weight. Of course, this is meant to help an eagle hold onto a thrashing fish; but if the eagle gets ahold of a fish that is too big, it cannot let go and may actually drown.)

On our way back to port.

Nautical Sheila Marie.

Back on dry land, Sheila Marie and I checked into the Friday Harbor House. Our room was amazing. One wall of our room was composed of two sliding glass doors overlooking the marina. We had a fireplace and a raised jacuzzi tub - with a view of the water from the tub. It was the perfect setting to celebrate (only a little bit delayed) our 3rd anniversary.

Sheila taking in the view just after sunrise.

The good folks at the front desk recommended a local restaurant for dinner. It was a tiny place hidden around behind a landscaping business, but was a find. The Backdoor Kitchen was charming, with a small, but varied menu and a warm ambiance. We enjoyed our evening immensely.

The next morning, the sum streaming in through the glass doors woke us up early. This was the view:

That's the ferry making its first trip of the day.

We ate breakfast overlooking the marina, poked around the shops of Friday Harbor, and not long after were on the ferry as it made its way back to the mainland.

Sheila Marie on the return ferry trip with Mount Baker in the background. Shortly after this picture was taken, a group of dolphins was sighted near the ferry - all I saw were small splashes, though.

When we were back on terra firma, we sought out an apple orchard. Sheila and I have gone apple picking every year since we started dating. We even took a group apple picking the day before our wedding. I wasn't going to let life on tour mess that up! We went to Merritt Orchards in the aptly named Bayview, Washington. The orchard is situated between the Puget Sound and the Cascade Mountains and the store is housed in a bright red barn. The place couldn't be more picturesque.