Vacation Day 3

Since we spent much of Thursday in the car, Friday we played in Seattle. After breakfast, showering, and other essential morning activities, we drove down to the Pioneer Square area. We parked down by the waterfront and strolled up the hill into Doc Maynard's saloon. There we picked up our nifty armbands and played around in Pioneer Square until the start of the Underground Tour.


When it was time for the tour to start, we headed back into the Saloon, where we were directed onto a bunch of wooden benches in a room with red walls and a large carved wooden bar. When the last person had taken their seat, one of the tour guides began the opening spiel of the Seattle Underground Tour. The spiel was filled with humor, mostly poking fun of the early (and current) residents of Seattle. I mean, who really builds a city on a pile of sawdust? I guess we did! The tour has two main focuses: (1) to share some of Seattle's less-known and humorous history and (2) to sell Bill Speidel's books (on which the tour is based). Following the introduction to the tour, we broke into three groups with about 40 people in each and we headed out onto the streets to find the doorways leading to the Underground.


These pictures are of us, enjoying ourselves while we try not to really touch the dusty, dirty, moldy walls. Most areas actually had newer wooden walkways to give us somewhere safe to stand.


The left picture (below) shows some authentic - I mean ancient - wallpaper. The right picture shows the original brick arches and rusty I-beams holding the city up over our heads (yes, there is a newer I-beam also). In the middle is an up-flushing toilet. One of the highlights of the tour, a fact that is always mentioned by every guide, is that the old sewer system used to drain straight into the Puget Sound. This worked well for most of the day, with the notable exception of high tide. During high tide, the pressure in the pipes built going the wrong way, which caused disasters if you tried to flush.


All this talk of the Seattle Underground may raise the question - why is there an underground? The answer, according to Bill Speidel, is that Seattle burned down. The reconstruction of Seattle occured in two parts - the "city" rebuilt the streets and the businesses rebuilt their own businesses and the sidewalks in front of them. There was a slight disconnect when the "city" decided that Seattle should be raised higher above the tide flats. The new streets were built by putting up large walls along each street and then washing/moving dirt from the 50 foot cliffs nearby into the streets to fill them up. The new streets were now 8-14 feet above the old ones. However, the businesses and the sidewalks were now 8-14 feet below the street. To cross the street, you would walk to the corner, climb the ladder up to the street, cross the new street, climb the ladder back down on the opposite side of the street and continue along the sidewalk there. The real problems came when people were too drunk to climb the ladders, or when there was an accident from the street above that spilled over into the sidewalk, killing some innocent pedestrian below. The city wasn't sure what to call these deaths, probably since they didn't want to take responsibility for them, so they ended up calling them "unintentional suicides". Eventually, the sidewalks were build up level with the street, and the businesses moved all of their entrances up there too. There were skylights put into the new sidewalks to try and light the underground a bit, and lots of things ended up stored down there - even old bathtubs. Eventually the underground was condemned - mold and other contamination made it un-livable. But it's okay to go down for just a couple of hours, about the time of the Underground Tour.


When we were all safely back above ground, we stopped in the Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory for some treats. Then we all piled and squished back into the cars and drove a short distance to the Seattle Center, where we watched Kung Fu Panda at the IMAX theater. The theater is great - huge screen, 12000 watts of surround sound, comfy seats, and you're allowed to bring your lunch (we did). After the movie we paused by a fountain for a minute.


Then we headed back home. It was a tiring day.


But eveyone woke up in time for dinner and a dip in the pool.