Washington State, Seattle, and Whale Watching! Leg 3 of cross country RV trip!

intro
Welcome to RView podcast where we talk about life travel and real estate. Join George and Lisa Hernandez each week as they share insights and parenting tips about their life as a blended family with fourteens their crazy travel and adventures and get Lisa’s input about real estate as she juggles it all while still managing her Top Producing real estate brokerage view properties.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Hi, friends. Welcome back to our view Podcast. I am Lisa RichartHernandez.

George
And I’m George Hernandez.

Lisa RichartHernandez
And last time we left you we had just been to Yellowstone National Park, and we’re on our 45 day cross country RV trip. We still had Ryan, I’m sorry, Tyler and Bailey with us. And his girlfriend are two 16 year olds, and we were dropping them off at the airport in Seattle. So we decided to do some touring of the Washington area while we were there. And so on our way to Washington State. We ended up staying at another hot springs. It was in Oregon we drove right past Idaho port Idaho. We didn’t get to stay a night in Idaho,

George
most thicker for Idaho.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah. So what we do if you haven’t seen our Facebook or any of our YouTube videos, where we have a sticker ceremony, so on the side of our RV, we have a map with all of the states. And every time we either spend the night in a state or George now says spend a significant amount of time in a state then we’re allowed to put a sticker there but we can’t put a sticker on our RV travel map if we haven’t spent the night there. So we have this whole map we did the northern states and we did not go to Idaho or North Dakota for Idaho. I know poor Idaho. So we’ll have to if anybody has any great ideas of a reason for us to drive from South Carolina to Idaho, and stay the night in our RV. Please share them with us at RV podcast comm we would love some tips about what’s so great about Idaho for our next adventure. But on the way there like we said we stopped at a it was in hot What was the name of it?

George
grand hot springs,

Lisa RichartHernandez
grand hot springs in Oregon. It was in Legrand, Oregon. And it was a cute little just a little RV park right up next side of the mountain. Yeah,

George
it was really cool. I thought it was very nice,

Lisa RichartHernandez
big, huge Poulter sights. Not very many people there at all. They did have the hot springs hot tub.

George
And again, they weren’t open till nine o’clock at night.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah, we’ll have to look up and see.

George
That doesn’t matter if it’s a religion, or they just got to get in the freshwater

Lisa RichartHernandez
and Bozeman they said it was some sort of religious type of thing. They don’t work during the day or something on the weekends. Not on a recent sure if you do know that too. please email us. cuz I’ve been trying to Google search it and check it out

George
But I did chek out the hot springs and it was it was nice. It’s basically two pools full of hot spring water.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah.

George
And one of them was really hot. I mean, like, hot tub. 105 hot.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah, that was cool. Yeah. And that water’s just supposed to be like really, really good for you for your body with all of the minerals and natural things in the water. So that was a nice little relaxing stopover. Before we headed in the next day to Lake Pleasant RV Resort in Bothell, Washington, which is about 30 minutes outside of Seattle, the city of Seattle. It’s also about 30 minutes from Edmonds, where we took our whale watching tour from so it was a great little location for some day trips. I’ll be honest, the kids were kind of excited to get back into

George
like a city mice were happy to get back to the city.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah, they were happy to have their creature comforts. So the really cool thing about the resort is is kind of like a big loop. And they have these gigantic, super tall. I mean, they must have been 30 feet tall. All right, green pine trees.

George
Yeah! They really thin one though.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah, but they’re super tall and thin and thick. It was like a thick wall of green all the way around the outside of the resort. So although you were kind of like right in the middle of like a suburb. You didn’t feel like you felt like you’re in a very like rural area. There’s a lake right in the middle of it. We had a back end site, but there’s you know, plenty of room. It was it was a nice resort.

George
The resort was very, very nice. As the driver I always look at these things. From my driving point of view. It was a little little bit tight. But manageable. The spots were a little tight also, but hey, you’re 32 minutes from Seattle. Like Lisa said, we were in the middle of suburbia. And it felt like we were camping. It was really, really well done.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah, yeah, I totally agree. I think there might have even been some people that actually like lived there. But it wasn’t like raillery. But, you know, right outside of the resort was a grocery store gas station. chick fil a,

George
because they couldn’t wait. No, I

Lisa RichartHernandez
don’t think they walk there. But it was a few blocks down the road. But they’re very happy to get some, some fast food. The funny thing that 16 year olds look forward to. But so we highly recommend that location. And the people were great there. Of course, you know, everything. COVID. So we didn’t really use any of the amenities or anything like that. It was just, I think, great home base.

George
Yeah, I think every, almost every place we’ve been to so far the amenities have been closed. Yeah, where we are right now. So just keep that in mind, folks.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Right, right.

George
Even checking every check in that we’ve pretty much done has been through a window.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah, that’s true. It’s all like, you know, the people go like, here’s your paper, or we’ll leave it out for you or leave a light on for you. Bye, bye. Yeah, that’s it. A mass required everywhere. So very safe feeling. We, the first night there we went. We just, I don’t know what time did we get there. Um, it was like around three o’clock ish. Probably by the time it

George
was late afternoon. And we were getting hungry and we decided to go grab a bite to eat. Was that the night that we went to? Oh, boy.

Lisa RichartHernandez
I’m gonna It was like a little schoolhouse

George
was mcmenamins mcmenamins Anderson school was the name of the restaurant.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah, where it was, it was kind of like a pub. And it had this really cool outdoor seating. And I have the feeling that like if it wasn’t COVID it would be just like a super cool place to go. Like have appetizers and or cocktails and sit outside. They had everything from fish tacos and burgers to I guess you got the fish and chips. And yeah, everywhere is good. Yeah, it was good. It was like a pub. Like an upscale pub, I would say.

George
Yes. And we obviously realize that there’s a ton of breweries here. Oh, yeah. So they had every kind of you know, if you’re a beer lover, this is the place to be. I mean, they every beer, coffee and

Lisa RichartHernandez
salmon. Washington State. Very happy. If those

George
are your three things. This is where you need to move.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yes, exactly. Exactly. So we had a nice dinner. And we had just been on the go like literally everyday Waking the kids up at six in the morning and keeping them out till nine o’clock just going all day to see Yellowstone and dizzy Custer State Park. And did you know see all the things that we wanted them to see? I just realized they never complained once about getting up early and doing these things. They loved it. They had a great Yeah, yeah. We just throw them in the back of the Jeep. And we started driving and it was it was really fun. Especially when we put the top down on the Jeep. That was great. But it got a little bit more chilly as we headed out to Washington State. And so I decided that it was going to be I think that was we came in on a Thursday. We had a nice dinner Thursday night at that pub that we talked about, and just kind of went to bed. And on Friday. We took our time in the morning to wait for the city traffic to die down. And then we had it down into the city of Seattle.

George
Yes. And the drive from the RV Resort Lake Pleasant RV park. was awesome. 32 minutes and we were downtown parking in a parking lot. Real easy. Really. We didn’t take highway if you remember that we did going in we didn’t go out we did

Lisa RichartHernandez
like a little it was it kind of took us through the suburbs to get into the city. But yeah,

George
it was also a nice easy drive. Easy parking.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Of course, again, yes. COVID. So I was just don’t really know what it would be like if it wasn’t COVID and riots.

George
We haven’t had a true feeling of what it would be like Yellowstone, Custer all these places because it was all affected by COVID.

Lisa RichartHernandez
And they’re all new experiences for us. So we don’t really have a brahmer to sort of gauge You know what, what was it like beforehand?

George
So will it be when COVID is over?

Lisa RichartHernandez
knows what we did notice driving into Seattle into the city. There were still there were still stores boarded up Brooks Brothers There’s and a lot of stores were open but still boarded. There was a noticeable amount of graffiti and a noticeable amount of homeless people. And I say that it’s expected, I think when you go into into sort of a big city, some of that, right. But it was in the, like, main tourist area that I don’t know. Even New York City does a Mongol used to anyways, do a good job of keeping their tourist areas kind of cleaned up.

George
Yeah, but I think Seattle, like we were talking about earlier. I think Seattle is more. It’s a small, big city, if that makes any sense. So I think everything is centered in one area where New York is so spread out. Well, New York is gigantic compared

Lisa RichartHernandez
to Seattle, but still a big city.

George
It’s but I had what I loved about it was that I felt like I was in a big city. But it felt small. Like I said to you before, it was a very warm,

Lisa RichartHernandez
no yellow cabs and stuff running around. Right? Well, that might be because of COVID, too. You know what I mean? Like there wasn’t,

George
there wasn’t a lot of people I know. But it didn’t look like a yellow cab kind of city. The streets were smaller. They had the train the buses, the cable car buses going, that was pretty cool. But I just didn’t get that feeling. Like I got the feeling that Seattle was still trying to be a small town city, if that makes any sense.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah, I don’t know. I don’t know if I totally agree with that. But I get what you’re saying. I feel like it was like a fun day in a big city when you go into the big city on a Sunday. And this was a Friday, when we were there. What should have been a busy day. Like sometimes just all of the industry is close to there’s no people there. That’s kind of how it was. There’s like big skyscrapers but hardly any Brighton again.

George
That’s that’s like you were saying we don’t have the barometer to say oh my god. Last time we were here in Seattle, it was packed and all day. Now. There’s nobody here. We don’t know. We don’t know if that’s normal. Or

Lisa RichartHernandez
somebody please, please enlighten us. If you’ve been to Seattle or your real Seattle person. We need we need to know you can reach us at our view podcast calm, please send us comments and tell us what’s Seattle’s like normally. But the first place that we went to is called pikes Place Market. Yes. And because that’s where everybody said to go. And I think it’s like the tourist hub there. But it was really, it was pretty cool. That was cool.

George
I enjoyed it. I was surprised at the size of it. I thought I always thought because in Charleston, we have a market. And it’s one level and a bunch of vendors and that’s kind of what I had pictured. I didn’t realize that that market was six storeys of market space.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah. And they’re all kind of like different levels. And it was quite a big area for sure. trying to think what else I could compare it to I can’t really think of any no i

George
i was like totally blown away that it was so big. Yeah, actually got confusing after a while because the restaurants I guess are on the second level and those were closed, all the restaurants were closed. So you know, staircases going down to the restaurant were closed. So we it was just kind of confusing, because we had to detour to different places. But overall, it was really neat market. Oh my god. fresh, fresh vegetables. Fish. The flowers were unbelievable. They were so beautiful.

Lisa RichartHernandez
In the flowers, not only were they beautiful, but they were like really inexpensive, like a beautiful bouquet of flowers for $15. Yeah, that if you have that thing deliver would be 100 bucks. Oh my crazy. Yes, yeah.

George
And the colors. It was it was pretty impressive. One thing we did notice was that there were a lot of empty spaces. So again, we don’t know if it was COVID driven. We’re looking at a book right now and the cover picture. The market is packed with people

Lisa RichartHernandez
assuming that that’s what I think a lot of vendors were missing. And like one of the vendors the vegetable vendor who was so knowledgeable and he told us all about all these different fruits and vegetables. And all my biggest regrets is that we didn’t stop back by there. I wanted to get some some produce from him because it just looked amazing. It was like all organic like probably $7 for tomato but it was like the most beautiful multivator you’ve ever seen. He gave me this little book that was the story of the people of Pike Place Market and I just thought it was, like really cool. It talks about you know, how the farm The market has survived. It says Welcome to Pike Place Market. Unlike other farmers markets in the United States, the market survived the past century thanks to a group of civic citizen advocates in the 1960s, who fought for what they believed in for the future of our city. The market has weathered 112 years of war, depression, booms and Bad’s the great gumption and generosity of the community and its foundation in the sea of the Seattle landmark. In addition to the flocks of tourists who drop in for experience, we serve locals who shop daily and weekly, consistently contributing to the economy and extending the markets reach. Today, the market boasts more than 500 businesses, and nine acre historic district and upwards of 15 million visitors a year. It’s a place of discovering adventure will always find something unique. So I would just definitely say that it was very empty when we were there and how heavily affected by COVID Yeah, absolutely. Because if that is what the history of it is, then it really sees 15 million visitors a year it was empty. The whole restaurant floor was completely shocked. I said that before in all of the like arcade. There was like

George
the any any big gathering area was closed down. They had a

Lisa RichartHernandez
carousel

George
carousel. Thank you. Yeah, carousel area arcade area that was all closed down. It’s it’s just it’s affecting business. And it’s sad.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah, yeah.

George
So from pikes Place Market, we went down today,

Lisa RichartHernandez
let’s talk about some of the things that we did do in pikes place.

George
What did we do? Wait? Well,

Lisa RichartHernandez
we always seem to manage eat our way through a great town with great food and Seattle is definitely did not disappoint us. It was very good. We started with the world’s best

George
clam chowder and router?

Lisa RichartHernandez
Well, I don’t know. It’s just one. Like how many awards I had. That

George
was one of them.

Lisa RichartHernandez
It was very delicious. It was very delicious. Not just like the coffee and elf that’s like the world’s best coffee. Like this was literally really very delicious.

George
It was really, really good.

Lisa RichartHernandez
What was the name of the place? Do you have it written down?

George
No, the place we didn’t get? We didn’t get the name.

Lisa RichartHernandez
And then right next to that was the Italian place.

George
Oh, yes.

Lisa RichartHernandez
What’s the name of it?

George
We didn’t get the names.

Lisa RichartHernandez
We were there all on my Facebook and I will put the links in our show notes. Because I know that I have I have the names of them. But they’re down this little alley. And it’s, you know, everything was to go they didn’t really have in house eating. So I tried the clam chowder. George got this meatball sub that was for you could just like basically, we just followed our nose. Like you could just smell the garlic cooking and you know that really delicious garlic smell. Sort of like, Where’s that coming from? and ended up at this Italian little place that we eat. we all we all had a bite of everything. And that was pretty cool. And we also got the macaroni and cheese.

George
Yes, that was good too. And I would highly suggest doing what we did. There was four of us. We all just grabbed a little something like the meatball sub, they had a whole sub or half a sub and I said let’s just get a half so we can all taste it. We all tasted it. We had a small cup of the clam chowder. we tasted that we had a small cup of the macaroni and cheese. We just tastes it our way through pike. Yeah, Pike Place Market.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yes. All the way to the apples which I did not realize. Washington is known for apples and cherries. And so we got these delicious Carmel, Carmel covered

George
apples at the soul. Lisa says let’s get the Apple will eat it later in the RV. George says that’ll never happen. Because

Lisa RichartHernandez
it made it home. Well then she said oh my god just slice it for you. And I was like, Well, if you’re gonna like it was bezels lights or of course we’ll have it like,

George
yeah, I think this thick made it home. That Apple was oh,

Lisa RichartHernandez
we had each had a piece of it for dessert. That night. Okay, if you say so. Needless to say it was thank God we had done all of that walking. We actually did walk another 15,000 steps that day, touring the whole city. But I still don’t think that we watched enough to wear off all the calories that we ate So I think it was a wash. Maybe, while we were down there, we missed the gum wall, which is kind of a disappointment to us and the kid they wanted to see it. But then we also felt like it’d be like a whole

George
host for COVID COVID, central

Lisa RichartHernandez
COVID Central, so we just skipped to the gum wall. But that’s something that you want to see when you’re in downtown Seattle. Near Pike’s market is a gum walls, these walls, there’s like literally covered with gum,

George
which they did clean off a couple years ago, and it is covered with gum again. Yeah,

Lisa RichartHernandez
so that I didn’t get a video. So we missed that. But we did do the Ferris wheel, the big Ferris wheel, which is it’s like one of those glass kind of Ferris wheels. I think it was about $15 a

George
person or $15 per person. And

Lisa RichartHernandez
you get Yeah, you get a view of like the whole whole Seattle City and the water. And one thing I had to say that really took me by surprise with Seattle, is how beautiful the landscape is. The water is crystal blue and the mountains and you could see snow capped mountains of Mount Olympia and Mount Rainier in the backdrop. And it was just incredibly beautiful. And clean.

George
The water was water. I’ve been to so many cities, New York, San Francisco, San Diego, and every city. Usually their water right by the city is pretty dirty. It’s just murky. And like the shipping area. Yeah, like the shipping area. And we were in San and Seattle Bay, which is a shipping area. And the water was crystal clear. I mean, even my son Tyler was telling me how he kept saying, Dad, look, you can see the pilings almost all the way down to the to the to the sand. And I was very surprised that so I don’t know if they’re doing something to keep the water so clean, but whatever they’re doing. It’s working. It’s beautiful. Beautiful.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah, I mean, it just might just be because it’s freezing cold on me college is different than when different places are warmer. I

George
thought about that, too. Yeah.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Different things live in different places. But that was very, very surprising to me. So after we did our fares will, we did quite a long walk down the waterfront. Yeah, I

George
think it was almost 10 blocks. Yeah.

Lisa RichartHernandez
To Olympic statue Park.

George
Yes, that was at the end of the walk.

Lisa RichartHernandez
And like a bunch of very modern art, art, I guess. There was like a silver tree. And there was like some,

George
everything is open to interpretation. Exactly,

Lisa RichartHernandez
I guess, very modern art. I imagine again, not during COVID that this would be like a place where a lot of people hang out overlooks the water, very beautiful views. You can see the mountain in the background. You can see the Space Needle in the background. It’s kind of sort of the end of the city. So you have just this really nice, nice view and walk from there all the way up to the Space Needle.

George
Yes. And that was uphill. But again, a very walking friendly city. I think you can walk to pretty much everything. Yeah, there

Lisa RichartHernandez
was a lot of people jogging and getting outside and getting exercise. Very green seemed very green, like a very green type of community.

George
Yes. As a matter of fact, Lisa and I both were talking about excuse me, when we went to Barcelona. Barcelona is very user friendly. Everything is they have bicycle lanes, they have motorcycle lanes. As a matter of fact, when you come to a red light in Barcelona, there’s a specific area where you car stop, and they have a big space in front of the cars for all the bikes and mopeds and motorcycles to come up and get in front of the cars.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Almost everybody drives mopeds.

George
Yeah, with our cilona the parking is lost the impact on they encourage motorcycles and bicycles and electric bikes, there was a million electric bikes in Barcelona. So Seattle, has bike lanes throughout the whole city. And I mean, they’re just dedicated to bikes. And they’re marked very clear. They’re all green. And kudos to Seattle for doing that because I think every city should do that. And then people will do it.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Right. I mean, the reason we don’t that’s one thing that disappoints me the most about Charleston, I think is the real He has nowhere to go ride your bike. You know, like when we’re down at our resort in Hilton Head, I love getting, there’s, you know, 65 miles of bike trails, I think, at least in Hilton Head and you can ride your bicycle everywhere because there’s, like wide paved bicycle paths that you feel safe on. And I just think that, you know, so many, like, I love communities that are like that. I wish there was more of them.

George
If there were more people would use it. Yeah. Again, where we live is not forward thinking in that aspect. They keep building roads, they keep building communities, but they don’t add bike paths or greenways.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah, I think part of it is some of the cities maybe like newer also, as compared to, like Charleston, we just physically don’t have the space. I mean, everything is hundreds of years old there and cobblestone streets and stuff and very narrow for where the buildings are, and things like that. We couldn’t just add another lane.

George
Barcelona is much older than Charleston. Yeah, that’s true, I guess. But um, they’ve figured it out. And it’s a city. Okay. You know, whatever, it, I think they should do it.

Lisa RichartHernandez
We need to do some research on bike. That’s okay. So let’s go on. We did the Space Needle, and walked up there. And I decided that I didn’t want to buy tickets ahead of time. Because after experiencing Yellowstone, and how like, hazy, hazy it was because of the forest fires, I was like, I’m not going to Seattle, Panda go up to the top of a sky needle, which is $35 a person and not be able to see anything. But the day that we were there it was crystal blue skies. I mean, you could see the leaves on the trees from miles away, it was so clear, beautiful blue water, beautiful blue skies, Green Mountains, snow capped mountains, the city. And they were like, super COVID. prepared, I guess, if you want to call them Oh, yeah. Like we’ve got our tickets outside of the kiosk. And you go to the next holding, like they, they basically tell you what times are available with your ticket. And it was very limited the number of people that go each time of day. So ours was, let’s say three o’clock, and maybe there was like 10 people or something at three o’clock. And then you go to the next station where you click your own ticket, and then you go into this place. And you go through this light that’s supposed to sanitize.

George
It looks like a metal detector. But you have to twirl around two times and in like

Lisa RichartHernandez
20 seconds. Yeah. And the light kind of supposed to kill viruses and bacteria that’s on you, which, like, Why don’t they just put these in schools? Why don’t they just put them everywhere right now. Right? I mean, seriously, like if especially but especially schools where there’s all these kids going in, if they, you know, just de COVID ties them all aside from the mink, and made sure they weren’t sick and did testing. Like it would help. But okay, let’s not get off on a COVID module there. Right. So we did, we had to wear masks, he did your tutorial in the light, which was cool. Get in the elevator, they tell you don’t talk, because we don’t want to spread any spit or saliva, even though you have your mask on basically wrote up, and there was like a little recording and told you not to talk. And then you get off. And the restaurant was closed. And my friend Beth gave me great advice to, you know, just go to the restaurant, make a reservation for dinner, because it’s $35 just to go up to the top. You might as well just make a reservation for dinner because it’s free. And after dinner’s paid for anyways. Well, all the restaurants were closed. So we didn’t get to do that. But I think that would be an excellent idea. If it wasn’t, because I did take a picture of like the lounge and stuff and it circles around and just, there’s like, not only can you see like the walls, but there’s like a glass floor to it. Yeah,

George
the whole floor of the restaurant was glass. That was pretty cool.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Well, there was no tables there. So we could

George
I know. But I’m saying if you were having dinner, you would be sitting on the glass.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah, it’s really,

George
really cool. Which for me who’s afraid of heights was quite interesting.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Like a scaredy cat. So

George
when you get to the top, Lisa didn’t mention this. But when you get to the top, the viewing area is giant glass walls really thick, super sturdy, but it’s glass and it’s slanted at an angle so you can lean up against the glass and you’re kind of leaning over the tower. Oh, yeah, that was not good for George is beautiful. It was beautiful. We had a beautiful, incredible view but it was just not my thing looking. It’s so weird.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah, so you could see all the way around amazing views from the sky needle. And then we since the restaurant was closed, the little cafe is open, and they served just like beer wine, soft drinks, and I think hot dogs, hot dogs pretzels, they

George
had quite a few things.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Well, I saw some people eating a Seattle dog, which they said was fabulous. If you don’t know what a Seattle dog is, we unfortunately did not have the opportunity to eat one. Because we already eat our way through the market. But a Seattle dog is a hot dog that has cream cheese on it.

George
Wow.

Lisa RichartHernandez
That’s hot dog with cream cheese. And I put jalapenos and stuff on there, too. That’s interesting. So he thought it was really good and kind of spicy. So apparently, if you would like a hot dog while you’re up there, save have a lunch there.

George
And if you do order food or drink, then they have a designated area with tables. Did you say that?

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah, it was a very small area that was like sectioned off. Only two people could sit at a time. Birthday had to be seated when you’re eating. And that was the only time you were allowed to take your mask off and the whole entire time. Yeah. But it

George
was really nice. It was great view from that. Yeah, from anywhere up there.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah, there were some families just having lunch there or whatever. And

George
so the observation deck is at the very top, obviously. And then you come down one set of stairs. And that’s where the restaurant would have been had it been open. So we went down there and we walked around the restaurant area and took pictures laying on the clear glass floor. That was pretty cool. And then we exited the area.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah, well, right outside of there is that glass museum. And so we just got to kind of see from the outside of that. We didn’t have time to do that whole tour. But that also looks like it would be a really interesting and beautiful place to visit. Also,

George
fun fact that I found that about the Space Needle is six people have jumped with parachutes. off of the needle for were permitted for a marketing

Lisa RichartHernandez
stunt.

George
Yeah, real big stunt. So for people jump for marketing, and then to just jumped on their own when the whole BASE jumping thing was really kicking off. I thought that was pretty interesting.

Unknown Speaker
Yeah.

George
Yeah, you wouldn’t get me.

Lisa RichartHernandez
I don’t even know how they got outside.

George
I know you got to climb that big, giant glass. And then then you have that little weird ledge that they have. I don’t know. I guess when you want to do it, you want to do it.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Good. So. So after that, we decided we had a good long day, downtown spent about six or seven hours there between the market and the Space Needle. So we got back into the jeep and decided to take a little bit of a tour. We actually had itself away from our RV place but to West Seattle area, and had dinner with amazing views. One of the top 100 views actually, in the in the country for Open Table is this place called salties. restaurant. And what’s the name of the beach that it’s on George? It is called elkie a LKI alki Beach. And it’s it’s, uh, is that it’s like on the Puget Sound, right? Yes. And the sunsets over there. And so sitting outside at salties, you have the view of across the harbor, Seattle so you can see the downtown city in the Space Needle and sit outside and beautiful view again, the waters there you can hear the sea lions. It was just a great a great place to to end the day. With an amazing view, I would say expensive wise, it’s on the higher end of expensive. Again, with COVID. Very low capacity. We got a table through open table we booked a reservation, pretty much no problem. But we were there like 530 Yeah, and that was a Thursday. So the restaurant was huge, huge. I imagine it was normally a very, very busy restaurant. I had the salmon. It was fabulous. And I’m not even a salmon eater to be honest. But when in Rome, you know you have to have to eat with chocolate. And I mean, there has not been a salmon that I’ve had when I was in Washington. That wasn’t fabulous. Because the the fish is so fresh. And that’s what that’s what Yeah,

George
all the fish. We had the crab was super everything is fresh? Yeah, literally see the boats coming in with the with the fish or the crab or whatever. Yeah, that was

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah. So that was a fabulous dinner. craziest thing. The best thing the kids we had to get into second basket. They have this grilled sourdough bread with just this garlic butter and it sounds so plain and simple. Right now with garlic butter, and no it had the green stuff was it had like a little bit of chimichurri chimichurri on it. Yeah. And then the bread was like char, like, grill ugly, crispy and soft and delicious. And we two baskets of the between the four of us I think the kids that they were coming back only to eat that. So

George
yeah, to eat the bread. And yeah,

Lisa RichartHernandez
we tried out the oysters here, which were very good. Compared to Charleston, which are the smaller, more briny kind of salty oysters. These were about a medium sized oyster, but they were more meaty and a little bit sweeter than what we normally get in Charleston. And they were served with a raspberry mini mini a sauce and sort of like a regular shell. And yeah, it was it was very, very good. Oh, really good.

George
They were incredible. Yeah.

Lisa RichartHernandez
And so after that, if you can be there for sunset, I would highly recommend that for sunset. We were there a little bit before sunset.

George
But I think Santa would be perfect at the beach. Right? So

Lisa RichartHernandez
we just kept on driving a little bit further around that Peninsula, and we came along. Okie dokie.

George
That was the way they pronounce it is a EAELK i I elkie Hi. Oh, chi i but hold on. It’s a shinnok word, meaning buy and buy, which is the unofficial state model of Washington.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Well, isn’t that interesting?

George
We know it’s held. But that little town was awesome. I think next time we’re in Seattle, I definitely would love to spend the day there. Yeah, bunch of restaurants and bars right on the beach, right across the street from the beach. And the sun sets on that beach.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah. And then the mountains in the background and the water. It was it was really pretty.

George
I mean, when we were leaving. There was like a herd of people just heading toward the beach because it’s got to be the most beautiful sunset. Yeah, and I don’t know why we didn’t think to just stay and watch the sunset, I guess we just wanted to get well. By that

Lisa RichartHernandez
time, we were about an hour and a half away. About an hour and a half far away. And we were our exhausted away from our campground we’d kind of gone the opposite direction and take the scenic route. We did do I couldn’t help you know, the realtor me had to look up some houses in the area. So for about 800,000 you can get about a 1700 square foot house. Wait, they started I want to say like around 600 for a one bedroom. And up to over a million. So I guess like in the grand scheme of things being like literally like 25 minutes to downtown Seattle with a view of the ocean and the beach and the mountains. I was gonna say try to find a reasonable. Yeah, I wonder what their tax rates are here. Because Because I’m sure those will be way more expensive in California than they are up here in Seattle. Of course, we were in Washington and like the most beautiful weather that George was talking to the Uber driver the first night when we went to dinner and he was like, every year I say I’m gonna leave Seattle because of the rain and the gold and the jury and then summer hits. And

George
yeah, we’re very fortunate we were there at the perfect time. The weather cooperated it was clear was beautiful. We were like oh my god, we’d love the city and when we talked to that Uber driver even like, Yeah, come back in the winter and then talk to me.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah, yeah. So what we were here, the last I was like the last week in August and the temperatures were in the 70s mid 70s in the day and 50s at night, which will felt really good to me to put on a sweatshirt and you know some long pants and a little jacket and and be cooled off because it was 100 degrees back in Charleston home when we were there.

George
It’s funny because we did look like the tourists. We had the hoodies and we were bundled up and we’re looking around and there’s people walking around in shorts, shorts

Lisa RichartHernandez
and tank. Clearly locals This is their hot weather season. We’re freezing it out over here. My blood is thin from my Michigan days, that’s for sure. 25 years in South Carolina. Oh, yeah. So that was our first fabulous day and with, with Tyler and Bailey, and I tell you, we, we really covered a ton of ground, we really saw a lot of things in a short period of time. And if you’re planning a trip here, I would definitely give yourself more time, especially if it’s not COVID time. Because then you would be able to, you know, just kind of really take a step back and relax a little bit more and enjoy some things. A little bit more in depth.

George
Yes, absolutely. And I would also agree with that, give yourself more time, because one of the things that we kind of look back and we were like, Man, I wish we had more time, because we’re looking at these beautiful mountains, our near Mount Olympia. And we were like, if we had more time, we would have loved to have gone over there and seeing them up close. Because they’re just so inviting. They’re there. These beautiful mountains is hot, and there’s still snow on the peaks. And

Lisa RichartHernandez
yeah, I don’t think the snow are relieved, obviously, if it’s still August, but I would love to explore the Olympia Peninsula in that Washington area to seem like a bunch of beautiful places. And we just kind of started heading south to Oregon before we really had an opportunity to sort of escape over into that area. So I think there’s a lot more things that you could do in Washington State. Oh, we haven’t even talked about Friday. That was just on Thursday, all the things we talked about. On Friday morning, we got up and we went into Edmonds, and we did our whale watching Tour, which was kind of one of the highlights of our trip so far for me too.

George
Yes. And that was awesome. We use the Puget Sound Express. It was $135 for adult adult. And if you have a child between the ages of two and 10, it’s at $5. And it’s four to five hour trip to go whale watching. And, yeah,

Lisa RichartHernandez
they have a couple different ports that you can go out of Port Townsend, or admins. And they may have another one I’ve just yeah, I tell you what, the Puget Sound Express. It was great because of COVID. Again, they had low occupancy. And it was so comfortable. Like George said it was five or six hour trip. And I’ve been on boat trips before where you go out and you’re like, kind of like these metal seats and it’s not really that comfortable. And this was like a luxury boat. I mean, it went 35 to 40 miles an hour. We sat on the inside, we ordered the blueberry buckle, which I highly recommend. It’s just like a coffee cake. And then you buy your coffee cup and you get to keep it as a souvenir has unlimited coffee all day or hot chocolate. And you sit inside and you can see I mean, the right out there when we first got there in the morning. The fog was still there. So it was like hazy. And then like as we got in closer to this what San Juan Islands Yeah, it this the fog lifts and it was beautiful. Incredible. Just beautiful.

George
Yeah. The boat the ride boat ride alone.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yes, was worth it. It’s funny because we like I was super excited to see the wealth. I had never seen real whales in real life. And I’m gonna be brutally honest, well,

George
besides like SeaWorld

Lisa RichartHernandez
right beside SeaWorld and that’s just like, you know, it’s like going to see it. See a, you know, a bear in the cage. It’s not the same, you know, or bison in the zoo, but like seeing them in their natural habitat was really cool. So like in Charleston, we have the dolphins, you know, right. So everywhere we go in the boat. It’s it’s you just see so many dolphins. It’s just like a very, very common incident, right. But tourists are always like, Oh my god, dolphin watching. This is so amazing. And like we would take people on the boat when we had the boat. And we’d be like, there’s the dolphins here the dolphin. Yeah. And they would be like, That’s so cool. So it’s kind of like that here but with whales. And so I guess in my mind, I kind of wonder the name. What are the kind of whales that we saw Joel Well, I always thought killer whales. I kind of was picturing. Like, I wanted to see the 40 foot whale. Like I wanted to see the humpback whale this gigantic like the hugest whale I’ve ever seen, like the hugest fish I’d ever seen. And I we didn’t get to see those. But I’m not disappointed at all. And our trip. I mean, it was amazing. Like,

George
no one,

Lisa RichartHernandez
seeing how beautiful it was. But in my mind, I was like I’m gonna see like, you know, gigantic whales

George
are told Totally agree with you. And I will say that even had we not seen any whales, even the boat ride and seeing the San Juan Islands and all the islands out there. I think that was like a really cool, beautiful trip. The whales were like a bonus. Yes. One thing I will say though, is it kind of missed my expectations of whalewatching. When I think of whale watching, I’m thinking right next to the boat like he can see the full whale. We were a good two 300 yards away from the whales. Every picture that we took, we had to zoom in and it was very blurry.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yes, this is good advice. I would either bring binoculars, or one of those cameras with a really long lens telephoto telephoto lens, because that’s really the only way you could get

George
excellent pictures. If you want great pictures, you need to do that. If you’re there to just see them swimming in their habitat, then you can see it and be happy. But they were way further away than I thought they were going to be.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah. It’s like we saw a bunch of sea lions, too, that we we drove by. And I’ve seen sea lions and I’ve seen what are the other the big. The big ones that are endangered that swim in the Florida waters all the time. Oh, manatees, manatees, manatees and sea lions are all giant fish too. So they kind of like from so far away looked about the same sizes that they didn’t look like a 40 foot fish or they were just too far away. So

George
yeah, I was telling Lisa earlier today when we were discussing our podcast and what we were going to talk about. in Charleston. We have dolphin everywhere, everywhere. When we had our like Lisa said when we had our boat, we could just go out on the boat and show our friends. Dolphins everywhere. But it would be like us taking our boat out and saying to our friends. Oh look the dolphins way out there. You see him 200 yards away. Isn’t that awesome? It’s like

Lisa RichartHernandez
maybe like I’ve been like literally waterskiing in the water before and the dolphin was like 20 feet away from me. You know, like

George
remember we got the video from our boat when when the dolphins were swimming on our wake. Yeah, I mean, yeah, a whole pod of dolphins on our way.

Lisa RichartHernandez
I thought we were gonna get lucky that one time when when I was swimming toward us, swimming towards us, and then the whales like went under or something.

George
Yeah. So and that

Lisa RichartHernandez
managed to everyone’s expectations about what they’re going to

George
do on that. It was totally worth it. The crew of the Puget Sound Express was fantastic.

Lisa RichartHernandez
They were all natural. Yes, super knowledge information.

George
The the main guy that was given us our play by play was a wildlife photographer. And he actually had the biggest telephoto zoom lens I’ve ever seen

Lisa RichartHernandez
in my life you could buy the photos from him if you wanted to. Right

George
so that was really cool.

Lisa RichartHernandez
I didn’t get he didn’t really get that many great pictures that day just just because of where they were there was a lot of like boats there and they they just weren’t like popping jumping out of the water so much I guess whatever like flipping out like with like Shem shampoo like I was just kind of like hoping for one of those moments.

George
I know, but again, I don’t want to sound like it was a letdown because it was really really cool. Really interesting. But whenever you see an ad for a whale watching trip What do they show you the whale jumping out of the water.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Right!

George
The whale doing this big backflip in the water

Lisa RichartHernandez
and a big Giant tail Yeah,

George
It was none of that. All we saw was

Lisa RichartHernandez
one time you got one.

George
Well he did the what they call the buoy or the peak. He just lifted lifted his head out of the water to peek around and see what was going on.

Lisa RichartHernandez
You can see all the white under

George
I did manage to get a picture of that but it was so blurry because it was so far away. Yeah, but so again, I guess in our heads we had this expectation of seeing this big splash and the whales and all this and really no.

Lisa RichartHernandez
oh but I will say one thing that I’m definitely sold on now is I want to do an Alaskan cruise. I mean, that whole area. Literally it was worth it just to be on a boat ride. It was just worth it to be on the boat ride. It was so beautiful. If I would have never known I was gonna see a whale I would have still paid the $135 for a boat ride

George
That’s what I was saying before.

Lisa RichartHernandez
And it was cold. It was cold. We definitely we brought her backpack. We brought layers. We had jackets and probably could have used some hats. But even though it was crystal blue, sunny out, that wind and that boat flew, it was a big boat.

George
Very comfortable. Brand new. It looked like it was brand new.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah, like very comfortable. you order your sandwiches ahead of time. And ham and turkey sandwiches, the food’s food was really good. Yeah, it’s just a very comfortable, comfortable trip. And, you know, we’re talking about the naturalist and stuff. And we had Tyler and Bailey with us. And I really think about it when we talk about all the things that we did, how much those kids actually learned without knowing that they were learning.

George
Oh, yeah, absolutely. And then they were soaking it all in,

Lisa RichartHernandez
and just experiencing it and, and, and getting those, you know, lifetime opportunities that I wish we could have had the other kids with us, we’ve got one who she won’t travel at all. And just, it makes me crazy to just to say, gosh, you’re missing out on,

George
I know,

Lisa RichartHernandez
so many opportunities. And I think like traveling like that with the kids is so great.

George
It’s like they say it’s memory, you’re building memories that they’ll talk about forever.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah, and it’s just like I said, it’s like learning hands on and seeing that the world is a bigger place than just our small community where we live or, you know, the town of Mount Pleasant even, you know, like, there’s a whole new world, different world out here. And different climates and different landscape and different people and different cultures and food like Tyler’s searching for sweet tea that they just don’t have in the northeast. Like, different things. I mean, it they’re all life learning experiences that just, I think it’s so important to do with our kids and, and, and to just talk to them. And I’m just thrilled that we have teenagers that actually want to spend time and hang out with us. I think that’s a big parenting.

George
Yeah, we were talking to

Lisa RichartHernandez
pat on the back right there whenever they want to learn

George
One of our teenagers today, and she was like, Oh my god, I wish I was there with you guys. And it looks so awesome. And you know, it’s just, it is nice to to be the cool parents. I guess

Lisa RichartHernandez
Or not the cool parents really just let our kids do whatever they want it at all,

George
No, because we do cool stuff. And they love to hang out with us.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah, yeah. Because we respect them. And their opinions as well. And we listen, we’re good listeners. And we try to understand, you know, their their points of view on things.

George
And we do cool stuff.

Lisa RichartHernandez
And we do cool stuff. All right. So here’s our parenting pat on the back for the day. Yes. As we sit in our RV with them on the other side of the country right now staying with our friend. Jeannie. Shout out to our friend Jeannie, who’s just moved here from California staying at the house with the kids. Two of them are in quarantine and have COVID third Jesus bringing them food upstairs and Tyler in her downstairs. Getting ready for him to start school on Tuesday.

George
Yes, thank you, Jeannie.

Lisa RichartHernandez
You’re famous now you’re on our podcast.

George
Yeah.

Lisa RichartHernandez
What else? So I think that’s pretty much our trip to Seattle. What did we do when we came home? From that whale watching trip? Oh, we had that fabulous. Thai food that was actually being takeout. It was 90 degree.

George
Oh, yeah, yeah. We had to go pick it up. And we ate in the RV. And it was kind of our last dinner with the kids. And the next morning Lisa drove them to the airport. And

Lisa RichartHernandez
it was about a 30 minute drive to the airport. And so I’m also on this where’d you say RV group? And I really, really like it if you’re an RV traveler. And you’re on Facebook. It’s called where’d you stay w er D, you stay. And you have to get accepted into the group. They ask you some questions. Very non judgmental, but it’s a great, great group because it gives you reviews and advice about places to stay all around. All around the country. And one of the people that had commented when I did my review of of the park that we stayed in, so that they had rented a car because they don’t have a tow vehicle very, very easily. And that’s how they got to explore the Washington area. So, you know, good note for anybody who is doing a cross country travel or staying in the area and you don’t have a tow vehicle.

George
That’s just another good option and opportunity to get around and easy. There’s so many great websites out there for RV traveling or just traveling in itself.

Lisa RichartHernandez
We’ll put the links to all your homework. Yeah, yeah, yeah, we’ll put the links to all of the places that we went on our trip to Washington, so that you can find it easily. And if you do go there, please let them know that you Listen to our podcast, and some time there. As we grow our podcast, we’re trying to get more Oh, opportunities for sponsorship and, you know, maybe some, maybe someday we’ll be able to travel for free. As a matter of fact, I was just filling out a thing for a podcast about Buffy comforters, which is my favorite comforter that like all of my kids have, and I’m addicted to. And I was like, Oh my gosh, they have like a ambassador program where you can like promote their

George
comforters. comforter is badass. I know, we yanked it off of our bed at home and brought it on the RV with us.

Lisa RichartHernandez
I know I couldn’t go that long without it. But I don’t want to say too much about them in case they don’t accept our affiliate ship.

George
I’ll say they’re awesome. Yeah,

Lisa RichartHernandez
they are. It really is. I truly love my Buffy comforter if you are especially like one of those kinds of people that can’t sleep when it’s hot but need to be snuggled up in blankets. The Buffy comforter is the way to go. That’s enough of a plug. Sorry, I’m sorry, Buffy. Okay, um, our next stop is Oregon. And we are going to be we’re going to go on the dunes on the west coast of Oregon.

George
Yes. We’re going to try our first harvest host. So stay tuned and listen for our next podcast and see how that goes. We’re super excited. Actually. I’m very excited to try it.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah. So we’ve got some things planned. And if you listen to this podcast and you have some ideas for us, please send us a message through our view. podcast.com that’s RV I ew podcast calm. And we are heading after Oregon. We are going to see to see redwood forest for five days over Labor Day weekend. If you have any. It’s think it’s Crescent City is where we’re saying and if you have any advice on things to see in that area, we would love advice there. Then we’re heading to Lake Tahoe area. I think we’re actually staying in Carson City there. And so we’ll be able to see like tacos like taco like taco after like taho then we are heading south to the Sequoia National Park area. praying that the forest fires are not affecting that and then detour us from that there are some there seems like to be hazy, but it’s a couple of weeks away. And then we are going to be in the Flagstaff Arizona area and seeing

George
George’s brother and then we got Reno. Oh, Vegas,

Lisa RichartHernandez
Vegas. Reno. I already said Reno that’s like Thomas Reno. Yeah. And I forgot we did get into Vegas into Vegas.

George
There’ll be no podcast from Vegas because I’ll be working.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah, that’s George’s work of playing poker. Now, we debated whether or not to go to Las Vegas, because we love Las Vegas. That’s our place. That’s where we met where we met. We’ve always loved it. We’ve always loved gambling. And we’ve heard a lot of mixed reviews about how it is with COVID right now. But there is a Luxury RV Resort in Vegas that we have been dying to go to. We’ve always looked at it. And I just got the email today that we were accepted in there. And our reservation so either for Monday through Friday. Sweet. That’s what a few weeks from now, I

George
cannot wait.

Lisa RichartHernandez
As always, I’m working from the road. So please don’t hesitate to send me in more listings because I’ve sold all my life on the road.

George
Well, you’ve sold four houses

Lisa RichartHernandez
have been super busy. Yeah, that’s great. Shout out to my team back in Charleston, and my virtual assistant in the Philippines. Without all their help. There’s no way all of this would be possible.

George
I know. Somebody’s got to find this expedition.

Lisa RichartHernandez
All right, go view properties, if you ever Hey, and since we have our name on RV and if you’re thinking about moving to the Charleston area or Hilton Head Island, I have some luxury motorcoach resort lots for sale there that I would love to get off my hands before Labor Day weekend,

George
and you can be our neighbor.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yay.

George
We’d love that place.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yes. All right. Well, thanks, friends. It was great to talk to you. Thank you for listening to our podcast. And if you have any questions, comments or advice, please reach out to us at RViewpodcast.com , that’s R V I E W podcast.com. And you can go down to the bottom and click comments or send us a message. Have a great one. Thank you.

George
Bye, everybody.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Bye Bye.

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