Olympia

We did a combination of walking and cycling today. Weather forecast of 70% chance of rain until around 2:00 was not inviting good thoughts of cycling so we chose to take the public transit bus into town and explore around on foot.

 

For my family and friends who live out of state, Lacey, where we are staying, is an outskirt of our state capital city of Olympia, and is an easy hop and skip into town.

We strolled the streets, visited a few small art galleries (a favorite of Vickie's), stopped into a couple of bike shops (fortunately the jacket on sale did not fit me) and a toy store to play with a few of the toys.

The guys at the bike shop told said that the 5th Avenue Sandwich shop was the best place for lunch. Vickie and I were not very impressed (okay, we were not happy) with our veggie sandwiches, but Gerry made a better selection of a salad.

After lunch the sun was peeking in and out, and a lot more out, so we hopped the bus to come get our bikes. The bus had taken us about half an hour to get to downtown; we biked there in just under that amount of time and the distance was oh so short -- as in less than five miles!

We cycled around the Capital campus for a bit, stopped in at the gift shop at the legislative building -- Vickie thought maybe we could buy a law here, but no.

We returned to the Historic District, where we had walked earlier, for now it was coffee/tea time.

 

Our cycle route into town from Lacey was very underwhelming as it paralleled the Interstate (I-5) so closely that the trees and bushes could not hush the noise even a little. When we finally got onto a better part of the trail -- it ended. Right at the Capital building. We wanted a different route home! We used the Thurston County bike map which proved to be a good tool. The best part was following (when we could) the "popular roads used by local cyclists". Those roads meandered and wove through quiet suburban neighborhoods with little to no traffic.

 

Couldn't pass up this tree. The photo doesn't really show it well enough, but the best I could do. It has two sharp angles and the tree grows healthily.

At the end of our long and full day we walked to O'Blarney's Pub for dinner, and to our delight there is entertainment on Tuesday nights -- traditional Irish music. We were toe stomping to the tunes of the six member group for an hour before heading home for bed time. Bed time -- as in, good night ;'-)