Guess what happens when a train hits a car? It's totaled. I told you that in my previous blog, but now that I have seen it first hand, I repeat: Don't park on the train tracks. Especially in North Dakota. In three feet of snow.
Lightning bugs light up because of the two chemicals in their stomachs called luciferin and luciferase. They react and make energy, which expels itself as light. The energy in lightning bugs is released as almost 100% light, and only .000somethingsomethingsomething percent heat, whereas lightbulbs energy is released only as 10% light and 90% heat, making lightning bugs more energy efficient than lightbulbs.
If you're a professional surfer, you need to go to Tahiti to surf because they have these special waves that are formed by the water hitting up against the reef and causing the majority of the energy in the water to hit against the reef and bounce back, creating a dangerous undertow. But the small amount of energy in the top of the wave that makes it pass the reef causes the water to fold over itself, making a wave like this:
I know this because I watched a documentary about it in 3D.
The Space Needle in Seattle was made to attract people to the 1962 World's Fair, just like the Eiffel Tower was built in Paris to promote the 1889 World's Fair.
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| The city from the Space Needle |
Speaking of 1889, that was an important year for Seattle. Well, actually it was the beginning of an age that brought Seattle out of small town nothingness and turned it into a real location that America can be proud of. You see, Seattle was settled only for lumber. But the part where Seattle was today was actually a muddy sinkhole because the tide in the Puget Sound fluctuates approximately 20 feet every year (I don't know all those specifics, that's just what the tour guide said). But basically all the buildings in "old" Seattle are a story above what they used to be because it wasn't sanitary or safe to live in a muddy sinkhole. Here's why:
The wonderful invention of the toilet revolutionized Seattle's way of thinking. Actually, the man in charge of the main sawmill first said that no one on the west coast would buy a toilet because no one wants an outhouse inside their homes. I'm so glad he was wrong.
But when people started to buy toilets they realized that they need a sewage system. So Seattle built a sewage system. Of course, when the tide came in once a year, it blocked up the sewage system and caused it to go in reverse, obviously causing major problems. The smart Seattleites came up with this:
Toilets elevated off the ground. They were so brilliant.
Anyway, after a few years of randomly being blown off the pot when the system decides to go into reverse, they decided to build the city a story higher than it was. So they started with the streets, raising them and leaving the sidewalks on ground level with ladders on the corners for crossing. This proved a problem with drunkards at night crossing the street. Hundreds of lumberjacks lost their lives to "involuntary suicide" because they couldn't cross the raised streets. This was around 1895.
So when they finally got the whole city on the same level to keep from sinking into the mud, they began using the old ground level buildings (now the basements) to keep food supplies. Here's the equation: rats+backed up sewage+the city's food stock+10 years= the bubonic plague occurring in the Western Hemisphere almost 500 years after the Black Plague in Europe, from 1905-1907.
Obviously that wasn't good.
Okay. Here's some more fast facts:
Almost everything in the Northwest and British Columbia was named by the discoverer Vancouver. Seattle was named after an Indian Chief who didn't want his name to be used (it was against his culture) until they offered him tons of money. Then it became okay. The Puget Sound was named after one of Vancouver's Lieutenants, Mr. Puget (I've found there's really no need to memorize first names). Victoria was named after Queen Victoria, which I'm going to talk about now.
So Tuesday I went to Victoria, BC on the ferry. It was quite fun, even though I wasn't there for very long. I couldn't do everything, so I decided to go to the Butchart Gardens, a massive garden complex that is highly touristy and absolutely beautiful.
Once upon a time Mr. Butchart was a cement guy. He made his living off of making cement. When he heard that there was a large limestone deposit on Vancouver Island in Canada, he packed up his family and bought the quarry. After 18-ish years of excavating limestone it ran out, so he moved to another place (I don't know the name of it) and left his wife and family at the house on Vancouver Island. One day his wife, Mrs. Jennie Butchart, looked out on her back porch and was disgraced by the limestone ruins. So she made gardens. 55 acres of them. Here was the first one:
And here are some shots of when she wanted to continue gardening:
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| Sunken Gardens |
The Sunken gardens are where the original limestone was dug. In the middle you can see here a large cone-thing sticking out of the bottom. That was the "bad limestone" that Mr. Butchart dug around. Now people just go up to the top to do cutesy romantic things like kiss and propose.
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| More Sunken Gardens |
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| Lake in the Sunken Gardens... |
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| Cutesy romantic spot. |
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| Deer! |
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| Even the trash cans are pretty. |
And the Rose Gardens. Unfortunately, I went during the dead season so there were no roses, only thorns. So it was more of a Thorn Garden, which didn't bother me. But I must say that even in the dead season the place is spectacular. On a normal summer day they easily top 1,000 guests. But today there were only 3 cars in the parking lot besides our tour bus, and our bus only had 10 people on it. Needless to say, we had the place to ourselves.
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| Thorn Gardens |
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| Entrance to the Japanese Garden |
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| The Italian Garden |
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| The drooling pig. |
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| The Indoor Garden |
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| Lunch. |
Now I don't really know (or care) much about plants, but I do know that this place was spectacular. And Mrs. Butchart called herself a novice. Whatever. The gardens are open year round and they have 14 permanent gardeners (in the summer they triple that number).
Oh yeah, and I went to Afternoon Tea at the Butchart Gardens. I would fit in so well in England if only it didn't rain so much...
I also had a tour of the town on the way to the Butchart Gardens. That was fun and I learned a lot of other useless (or useful) information. See this building here?
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| Victoria Parliament Buildings |
Well this nineteen-year-old (we'll call him Mr. Smith because I can't remember his name) was commissioned to design the above buildings, the Victoria Parliament Buildings. All was well until he went to make the statue that went on top of the building (the one that is of a very important person in history whose name I also can't remember). When the molding time came for the bronze statues, Mr. Smith lost the mold to the right foot, so the statue of Mr. Important Name has two left feet. This made Mr. Important Name very angry and cancelled the rest of Mr. Smith's projects.
Naturally this upset Mr. Smith, who decided to get revenge by building something spectacular right across the road. He ended up designing the Empress Hotel, a very historical inn that was built on a swamp right across the harbor from the Victoria Buildings. Of course, building a building on a swamp is pretty dangerous when you think about the sinkage they had in Seattle. But Mr. Smith was pretty smart and in the past 100 years the Empress has only sunk 3 inches.
Mr. Smith-1, Mr. Important Name-0.
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| The Empress Hotel |
Okay, I'm running out of facts and stories.But basically that's what I learned here in Seattle and Victoria. Sorry if it all sounds a little confusing- that's why I'm not a history teacher.
But I absolutely love Seattle and could probably live there if I could find the control button for the rain. Oh, and guess what? I ran every day in Seattle :) Yay!
Today I head out to Portland, OR. I absolutely can't wait to go into a tourist shop and tell them I'm from Portland, ME. When I worked in a touristy shop in Maine I absolutely wanted to murder every person who came in the store and told me they were from Portland, OR because they all did this obnoxious giggle-giggle thing. Here's my revenge...
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