Seattle and Anacortes, WA

Got up for another day in Seattle. Took the monorail over to the space needle/park area and went to the Experience Music Project and the Science Fiction museum. Spent all afternoon there. Pretty cool. The ‘history of the electric guitar’ exhibit was particularly interesting.

Turns out one of the people who invented the pickup for the electric guitar kept getting screwed over. He couldn’t get a patent for it because it was basically the same mechanism that’s used in a phone (just in reverse). Then, Gibson (?) managed to patent the same invention (‘only when used in a guitar’), and so the original inventor was pretty much pushed out of that business. Same guy also invented the first electric bass, but noone wanted to buy them at the time so he eventually went of business.

Anyway, the SciFi museum was also pretty cool. All Paul Allen’s stuff. They were asking for donations at the end, I passed. Paul Allen’s already gotten enough of my money, and everyone else’s for that matter. Was a nice exhibit though and we had fun. Unfortunately, after 5 hours in the museums that was all the time we had, so it was off to rent a new car and off to Anacortes.

The new rental is a Hyundai Elantra.  Kindav a letdown in power after having a Grand Prix, but it was serviceable.

Anacortes is a small seafront town that’s mainly there as a ferry port. We’re staying a at a nice motel that’s fancier, less expensive, and probably much nicer then the original place we had reservations (who never actually booked us even though we though we had reserved a room online. The second place that messed up on our trip, but they helped us find this other place, so no big deal).

Have to wake up early tomorrow to catch a car ferry over to Orcas Island.