The Great Seattle Adventure

Finally--a spare second.

As many probably already know, two Mondays ago--that would be April 28th--myself, four other students, and our two coaches left home for the National Ocean Science Bowl competition--nationals, this time. Our goal was to compete against 19 other teams in a game designed to test our every bit of knowledge on all things ocean. First, though, we had to get there...

Monday, April 28th
Day one consisted of travel. I don't think I've ever been subject to so many modes of transportation over the course of a single day. We began in a limo--courtesy of Jay Arneson, to whom we all extend our thanks--which got us as far as the airport. I've never flown before, so that was...interesting. We avoided the worst congestion because it was 5:00 in the morning (yes--that means I was up at 3:00 and yes, I regard that as such a fun way to start a trip), and managed to get on all in one group and pick the best seats. Esther (whom I would be spending most of the trip with), fought for and won the window seat, for which I decided she would eventually reap the consequences.
Several hours and a layover to Denver later, we broke through the cloud cover in Seattle, and spiraled in for a landing. The weather, in comparison to the drizzly, chilly, miserable climate we'd just left behind in Wisconsin, was beautiful.
After reclaiming our baggage and after one of our group members accidentally being coerced into donating $10 to some random charity, we all boarded a shuttle bus to a nearby rental car agency. I ended up crammed in the back of a white suburban, and I can tell you honestly--that combined with jet lag is not a fun thing.
We stopped in Tacoma (just south of Seattle) for lunch and some sightseeing. Union Station was there, along with some great glass sculptures that were built into a bridge that spanned the highway. The whole time, the weather was unnaturally sunny, and we could see Mt. Rainier in the distance.
After Tacoma, we got lost for a bit. Our guides--Liz and Jim, who'd organized the whole trip--knew of a national park--Nisqually National Wildlife Refuge--where we could wander for a bit to see the wetlands and the wildlife. We didn't trust our GPS, so we ended up somewhere in the middle of a massive suburb sprawl, and had to backtrack and loop roundabouts in order to get back. The whole time, I just couldn't believe how GREEN everything was (it's been a long winter). I found half a dozen blurry pictures on my camera from when I was leaning out trying to capture the green-ness of it all.
We found Nisqually eventually. The place had a history of having once been a farm--some "visionary" of agriculture decided that, despite all the perfectly arable land surrounding the area, he would conquer nature and drain the wetlands in order to make way for his business. Years later, in an attempt to preserve the ecosystems of Puget Sound, wildlife officials set Nisqually aside as a refuge. Walking through there was wonderful--the smell of water and pond muck, trees dripping with moss, and a long boardwalk that went out into the wetlands themselves, where you could birdwatch and observe the tide coming in. Over the course of two, maybe three hours, we utterly walked our feet off and were perfectly happy in doing so.
After Nisqually, we tried another site called Greys Harbor. It wasn't as interesting--save for the slugs, which I will be doing a post on later--and eventually we just decided to throw in the towel and head to our hotel. The day was pretty much over, except for a quick midnight excursion that we decided to embark on--after hearing that the hotel apparently had "beachfront property", we went out with headlamps and flashlights to find the water's edge. It turned out to be about a half mile from the hotel through paths that looked as if they might be hiding serial killers around every bend, but we made it, and spent some time combing the beach for sand dollars and crab carapaces. There was some licking of sand dollars by certain persons who will here remain unnamed, and then we all trudged back to the hotel for some glorious sleep. Jet lag included, that was a 21-hour day.

Tuesday, April 29th
Our goal this day was to catch a minus tide. Unfortunately, that meant getting up early...again.
We were up at 5:00, and on the road by 6:00. Our intention was to go to the minus tide first, but we ended up sidetracked at the Lake Quinault National Park, where we beheld the world's biggest spruce tree (and it was big--would've taken 12 people to hug). We managed to get to the coast in time for the tail end of the minus tide, and were just in time to poke around in the tide pools for just a little bit before the waves washed in in earnest. We saw all manner of interesting critters--mussels, barnacles, anemones, and little bottom-dweller fish puddling around in pools while they waited for the tide to come in. I made the mistake of wearing my boots, and so I was basically carrying around buckets filled with water in between each wave.
We could have stayed there forever, but there were more things to see.

We were starving by that point, so we headed over to the little town of Forks (apparently home of the Twilight saga) and raided a grocery store for lunch. We ate in a park, where we encountered a dog whom we were pretty sure was the rogue chihuahua "Bean" from the wanted posters at the store, and then moved out to the rainforest.
Washington is widely renowned for being home to one of very few temperate rainforests in the world. Our intention was to go to the Hoh Rainforest, but logistics included, we ended up in a different park, where we left our car at the visitor's center and tramped out into the forest. The place was beautiful--ferns, cedars as big around as a car, and moss and vines hanging everywhere from trees that towered hundreds of feet into the air. I was jetlagged, dehydrated and footsore beyond measure, but I could have happily stayed there indefinitely.

We got more food on our way back through Forks, for which I was grateful, and from there went our way to Rialto beach. That was an amazing sight. The beach is in fact a tombolo--a sand spit of land that juts out into the water and connects up with an island out in the water--and over the years, entire trees that had been washed out to see and polished clean of bark and branches had been washed up onto the spit. Mrs. Huppert's comparison was of a giant's pick-up-sticks game, and I would quite agree. One could easily make it from one end of the spit to the other without touching the ground, although to do so required some  degree of balance and climbing skills. On the island, there were more tide pools--dozens of orange and purple starfish--one of which Esther fell into. She wasn't too happy on the trudge back. After the beach, we went to a different hotel, where we ate pizza and collapsed back into yet more sleep.

Wednesday, April 30th
I got about 6 hours of sleep, and then we were up again and off for a whale-watching tour. Pretty much everyone slept on the car ride (except me--I was tired to death, but I can't sleep upright in a car), waking up only to board the ferry in Port Townsend and later use the bathrooms at the whale watching office in Anacortes, on the other side of Puget Sound.

The boat, when we made it, was a nice affiar--three levels, cushioned seats, and a lunch menu of chili-dog-pulled-pork sandwiches (someone on that boat has a sick sense of humor). They took us out into the sound, sailed around some islands, and after letting us ooh and aah at the harbor seals sunning themselves out on the rock, made for the area where they knew there to be whales. We saw some harbor dolphins (little more than darting black specks with dorsal fins, really), lots of seagulls and cormorants, and later some sea lions that began fighting and roaring at one another out on their little island. Eventually, we did manage to track down a whale--a Minke, which is a rather small, gray specimen with a dorsal fin like a dolphin--and spent close to an hour circling where it last dove and catching glimpses of its back disappearing back under the water. As infuriating as it was, it was awesome.
We ended the day with seafood, which most of us insisted upon since it's basically sacrilege to go to the coast without trying some. We each got a different plate, and spent the meal mooching off one another so that we could try it all. I shared my NPR story about pig bung and calamari (which no one appreciated, strangely enough), and there were some awful puns shared pertaining to the ugly throwpillow with the fake grass sewn on the front. I was tired again when we finally went back to the hotel, but happy in the knowledge that the next day, we would be allowed to sleep in.

Thursday, May 1st

As I predicted, sleeping in was heavenly.
We went to the Dungeness sand spit first thing in the morning--another long length of sand covered with polished, rounded stones and bits of smoothed driftwood with waves washing strange patterns along the shores. I learned from my past experience with my boots (they'd taken the entire rest of the day to dry), and instead wore my sandals. Unfortunately, those were even worse, and I ended up taking them off and walking most of the length of the spit barefoot (which took some creative trailblazing). Despite my feet, it was still great--wonderful weather, ocean sounds, and little crab bits scattered here and there which I decided to wrap up as souvenirs (I regretted that action later when they began to smell, but I persevered).
We had to get to Seattle proper next, so we boarded another ferry. I find I quite like the city--considerably more vegetation that the Twin Cities--and anyplace that puts a gigantic statue of a troll holding a Beetle Volkswagen underneath an overpass can't be half bad. My one complaint would be the streets, which had near-vertical inclines, and were so overparked on either side that they were basically a one-lane affair. There were some hair-raising close calls.
We made it to our hotel intact (hotel Decca), and spent a little time settling in and exploring (I love old hotels, though the two elevators on a 16-floor building was not a smart design), before heading out for some Thai food. We found a great place (Tom's Thai), ordered out on the street (it was too small for all nine of us to fit inside), and were violently cussed at by some passing old guy in a dapper little white suit who was convinced we were clogging the sidewalk just to annoy him. The restaurant owner assured us that the man wasn't from Seattle. The Pad Thai was excellent (though a bit hot for poor Esther, who had hers switched around with Eric's, the Thai iced tea was weird, and the frozen yogurt we had later was refreshing. We were all pretty happy when we made our way back to the hotel, and I slept like a rock, thank God.

Friday, May 2nd
The actual field trips that were sponsored by the NOSB organization were the next day. Esther and I had signed up for the zip-lining tour, and so we were bundled into a bus with a bunch of other kids we didn't know and were shuttled off to the Bellevue zip tour headquarters. We learned that most of the other people in our group were from Virginia. There was JC, Cameron (the funny guy), the coach from Mississippi, and some other odd characters who I eventually got to know over the course of the trip. The zip-lining itself, when we finally got through the safety procedures, was fantastic. Esther, I found, is afraid of heights (which casts some doubt as to her reasoning in choosing that field trip in the first place), but she and I both overcame that innate fear of throwing oneself off a perfectly stable platform onto a metal wire. It was awesome--the sound of your pulley system buzzing across the metal chord did indeed 'zip', and it was exhilarating to watch the trees and ground fly away on either side of you as you hurtled by. I was sad when it was over, though it will definitely serve as motivation to come out there again sometime in the future.
There was another field trip after that--the Mercer Slough wetlands--which wasn't really that interesting after everything else we'd seen, and back at the hotel, we had some down time. When the others got back from their kayaking excursion, we all dressed up in our finery and headed of for the Seattle Aquarium, where the opening ceremony for the bowl was held and some prolific speakers went up to congratulate and motivate us all.
We made it back to the hotel, and thereupon discovered that our window whistles, shrilly, when there's wind. Slightly longer night than it should have been.

Saturday, May 3rd
Competition.
We began with the SEB (Science Expert Briefing), for which we'd been writing, editing, and practicing essays and abstracts that we'd written about a bill on ocean acidification that's about to be reauthorized. Somehow, that was the most terrifying thing I experienced on this trip--even over ziplining. We were made to sit in a line with our abstracts out in front of us, the five judges facing us. We had to read off our abstracts, and then answer questions posed to us about said abstracts. We were allowed to confer on the questions, but we had to answer individually, and a few of the questions were beyond anything we knew (Claire pulled some marvelous creativity on hers that I will forever be in awe of). I was so glad when it was over, though in truth, the competition was only just beginning.
From regionals to nationals, there actually wasn't much difference to the buzzer rounds. The format was the same, and for the first few rounds, we were actually winning by our standard amount. Later, though, we began facing off some of the harder, more aggressive teams. We made it through the Round Robin, but after lunch (and an attack by an aggressive beggar-duck that literally tried to take food out of my mouth), we entered the Double Elimination rounds. The other teams got quicker, and the questions steadily got more difficult until it was a matter of lucky guessing. We had our second loss three or four rounds in, and found ourselves bumped out of the competition.
Overall, we did pretty darned good. We got fifteenth overall, and twelfth place in the SEB. It was a bit of a disappointment to be out of the competition before the finals, but at the same time, that gave us time to go out for some Mexican seafood out near the docks and more frozen yogurt. There wasn't much to do after that, save for attending a panel some lady was giving on how to improve our SEBs. Unfortunately, she was a terrible and entirely unhelpful speaker; sort of reminded me of a politician.

Sunday, May 4th
Star Wars Day--May the fourth be with you.
The competitions went on without us, and for the most part, we hung around in the ballroom where the finals were taking place and watched the rounds. It eventually came down to two teams--Arcadia high school from Southern California and the Boise, Idaho team. The final two rounds were very close--at the halfway mark of one match, they were tied 49 to 49--and the questions were so tough that it was near-impossible for them to get the bonus questions. Boise was at one loss and Arcadia at zero for the first round. Boise won once, so the two were tied at one loss each, and the competition had to be decided in one more round (by this point, we were all starving because lunch was being put off until the games were over). The second round was even closer than the first, and it came down to one final bonus question that they managed to sneak in just as the buzzer rang. Boise won by the barest of margins.
After that was pretty much formalities. There was an award ceremony, during which presenters would go up, announce that they would keep it short, and then yammer about this and that before finally giving away first, second and third prizes to the winning teams. There was some sponsorship recognition, and then everything was pretty much over and we all dispersed outside to the hallways.
Since it was only halfway through the day, our gang decided we would head up to Pike Place Market for the rest of the evening, and since Mr. and Mrs. Huppert didn't want to tag along, the five of us piled in a van with Jim and Liz and took off for downtown Seattle. We stopped at a sculpture garden along the way (lots of modern art), and then we all unloaded at the market and dispersed our separate ways. Esther and I, of course, ended up together, and we mostly wandered around one or two blocks in search of something I could bring back for my dad to cook. Things were beginning to wind down, so there were no fish-throwers, but I did find some awesome, lavender-flavored pasta, and various other touristy items to bring back as souvenirs. When asked, the woman selling me the pasta told me that the biggest thing to see in the market was the "gum wall", which we of course had to see after that. Not entirely sure what to think of that--equal parts awesome and disgusting, I suppose. I can't help but wonder what happens when it rains.
The group met back up after awhile, and we all headed back for the hotel so we could go out for dinner with the Hupperts again. No one felt like experimenting by that point, so we went to E.J Burgers, where we were served the biggest, greasiest, drippiest bacon cheeseburgers I've ever seen in my life. I eventually had to decided that I would only use my napkin when juice began dribbling down my wrist, because it was a hopeless battle otherwise. It was great.
We went out for frozen yogurt yet again, and along the way ran into our cranky little old man in the white dapper suit trudging up a hill (apparently he is from Seattle). We briefly considered stopping in front of him to talk, but decided we'd end up being beaten with a cane.
We packed that night. It was hilarious watching Esther, because she always over-packs.

Monday, May 5th
Travel.
It was pretty unexciting. We made our way back to the airport, and eventually boarded our plane. I smugly managed to seize the window seat before Esther, thus completing the circle of airplane karma, and spent most of the rest of the trip repeating the words "imgoinghomeimgoinghomeimgoinghome" on a subconscious level to myself. We said goodbye to Liz and Jim in Milwaukee (many thanks to them both!), and then made it back to the Minneapolis airport with time to spare. A short limo ride (which was somehow longer than both plane rides put together) and a lengthy group photo-op later, I was riding home with my dad, and life was good.

Man, it felt good to use my own shower.




Anyway--happy mother's day, and keep an eye out for my next post: The Enigma of the Slug.

Happy reading!
S.R. Koch