Seattle- Thursday, July 13, 2017

     Last night, we had some decisions to make.  We had hoped to go whale watching one day while here in Seattle, but without a vehicle, we didn't have as many options.  The whale watching tour leaves from Edmond, which is quite a ways north from Seattle.  Without a car, our options were to try to take the train further (which at best would mean two hours of traveling, one way) or to rent a car for a day.  Neither one seemed very appealing to us.  So, we had a family discussion and voted to scratch the whale watching trip.  That left us with an open day today.  Julie suggested that we go to the nearby mall, and the girls were both enthusiastic about that idea.  Scott was shocked at how quickly she had "Dublined" the last day's plans.  He came up with a counter-proposal-- let's take the light rail and monorail back to the Museum of Popular Culture in the morning, have lunch in that area, and then go to the mall.  Everybody seemed agreeable to that.

     There was a little bit of stress this morning.  In addition to expecting the worst news about Julie's aunt at any time, Anna started to see reports about torrential rains in West Seneca that were closing roads, etc.  Our house gets water in the basement, and it's something we always need to watch.  We started trying to contact people to check our house for us.  Julie's folks were en route from Montana to North Dakota today.  Julie's brother John was able to check it for us, and while we were getting water in the basement, it sounds like our usual problem amount and not too much more, so that was good to hear.

     We ate a quick breakfast and took the 9:00 shuttle to the light rail station in Tukwila, then caught the train into Seattle, changed at the monorail and took that to the museums at Seattle Center.  On the monorail ride, Scott and Julie had the cool seat right at the back of the monorail and saw everything out of the big back windows, next to where the driver would sit if we were going the other way.

     The Museum of Pop Culture, or MoPOP, covers an interesting mix of fanboy stuff that includes movies, tv, music, and video games.  The building itself is an attraction, as it is a piece of art covered with various mirrored, multicolored undulating surfaces. It sits right in the shadow of the Space Needle.  When we entered, Scott got his picture in the captain's chair of the U.S.S. Enterprise.  Then we started to explore the different areas of exhibits.  The first one we went through had attracted Julie and Anna's attention-- it was dedicated to an exploration of the horror movie genre.  The exhibit area had the camera and bundle of sticks from The Blair Witch Project, the mask of the Creature from the  Black Lagoon, the axe used by Jack Nicholson in The Shining, a model of Gizmo from Gremlins (that Emma said looked dead because they had it lying on his back for some reason), many things from Aliens, Jason's hockey mask and machete, and many other props and costumes.  They examined the genre in many ways, including a list of 100 horror movies to see before you die and a look at the answer to the question of why people like horror movies at all if they scare us.  The next area had a collection of items from science fiction movies and included such things as the mask and hands of Greedo and Jawa from Star Wars, hoverboards from Back to the Future, a  Ghostbuster proton pack and trap, a Dalek and Cyberman from Doctor Who, Mork's red space suit, an Ovion costume from the original Battlestar Galactica, and the red dress worn by "Number 6" and the flight suit worn by Starbuck in the remade version.  It also had a lot of prop weapons, ships, and other items.  The Discovery from 2001: A Space Odyssey was prominently displayed.  The next genre area had was for fantasy, and was Julie's favorite.  The atmosphere in each of these first three areas was well done, but the fantasy area may have been the best.  You walked into a door (that may also have been the cover of a storybook) and into an enchanted woods.  There were trees and woods all around, of course, but there were even "twigs" on the floor that snapped as you walked on them.  Here, we saw the coat of Sirius Black from the Harry Potter movies, Dorothy's blue and white dress, the Wicked Witch of the West's hat, the Cowardly Lion's full body costume, and the uniform of one of the witch's guards.  There were costumes from the Princess Bride including the swords and a glove for man with six fingers on his right hand.  There were the gifts from Father Christmas from The Chronicles of Narnia and the weapons of the Fellowship of the Ring.  They even had the helmet worn by the French k-nig-ht in Monty Python and the Holy Grail.  Emma said she loved that movie.

     The Star Trek franchise celebrated its 50th anniversary last year, and there is a gigantic display of props, costumes, and ship models from the several tv series and movies.  The entire exhibit took portions of two floors of the building.  From then original series, there was bridge furniture, Kirk's, Spock's and Uhura's uniforns, and even Kirk's "mirror universe" uniform, and the Gorn he had to fight, and a pile of tribbles.  There was even a tribble hiding under the bridge's control panels.  From the Next Generation, there was the uniforms of Picard, Giordi (complete with visor), Troi, and Data.  Data's head was under a glass panel in the floor-- the same head that is supposed to be buried under San Francisco right now, according to the story.   From other series, there were the uniforms of Janeway, Seven of Nine, Captain Archer, and many others.  There were displays about Vulcans, about Klingons, about Borg, and other aliens.  There was all kinds of props throughout.  We didn't spend much time watching the videos on display here, or in any of the earlier displays, but still felt like we had seen a lot.

     One of the reasons that Julie wanted to come to MoPOP was to see cars from the Fast and Furious movies.  She was a little disappointed that there were only two here, but they were both from the last movie that she and Emma saw in theaters only recently.  There was a gigantic display of guitars and other instruments that was shaped like an upside down Christmas tree.  We assume that these were owned by famous musicians, but you needed a computer to identify them, and it didn't seem like it would be a very easy task to find them in the huge three-dimensional collage.

    The special exhibit there now, with an extra charge for admission, is called, "The Jim Henson Exhibition: Imagination Unlimited."  Anna and Emma have never been fans of the Muppets, and Emma and her dad have even had a running tongue-in-cheek argument over whether the Muppets are real or whether they are puppets.  Scott says they are real.  Even so, he wanted to see these displays.  The first thing greeting you, of course, is Kermit the Frog himself.  The exhibit explores some of Jim Henson's early experiments in puppetry, including "Sam and Friends," commercials he made, and Rowlf on The Jimmy Dean Show.  Scott watched clips from an experimental film called The Cube which had a man discover that he was trapped in a TV show-- no Muppets involved, just a lot of bizarre, Twilight Zone-type imagination.  The Sesame Street Muppets are represented by Ernie & Bert, Grover, and the Count.  Here, we spent some time putting eyes, noses, and other face pieces on an "Anything Muppet."  The Muppet Show is represented by Dr. Bunsen Honeydew, Beaker, Scooter and an enormous wall of video clips all playing simultaneously to help show the energy and randomness of the beloved chaos.  Henson's later projects are represented with Muppets from The Dark Crystal, and Fraggle Rock, as well as costumes from Labyrinth.    

     We had lunch at this time, and ate at the Wolfgang Puck counter in the museum.  After lunch we visited the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame.  There are lots of inductees, but a few were featured like Steven Spielberg, Arthur C. Clarke, Guillermo Del Toro, J.R.R. Tolkien, George Lucas, Leonard Nimoy, Jules Verne, and John Williams.  That shows a bit of how broad the Hall of Fame has defined its subject and cast its net.  There were other exhibits at MoPOP that we decided to skip.  None of us had much interest in the Jimi Hendrix or David Bowie exhibits, nor the exhibit on the "12th man" of the Seattle Seahawks, and a quick look in the room on Indie video games was all Scott needed.  The gift shops were a lot of fun to browse through. 

     We then decided to start the trip back.  We took the monorail back to the light rail connection, and then took the rail to Tukwila.  There, instead of trying to get a shuttle from the hotel like we did last night, we managed to figure out how to catch a bus instead, and took that to the nearby mall called Westfield Southcenter.   Our first stop there was to get drinks at the food court, then we strolled around the mall.  It's pretty good sized- two levels, and maybe the size of the Walden Galleria.  Anna's new favorite store is Earthbound Trading.  She saw one yesterday in Seattle and one again here in the mall.  Scott got Julie a belated birthday present there- an aroma necklace, with some extra oils to put in it.  There's still a Disney Store in this mall.  We looked briefly in  the Seattle Team Shop and a store of things made in Washington.  The girls sampled some tea at Teavana.  We each chose something for dinner from the food court again.  Emma found some chicken teriyaki very much like the kind that they she has always enjoyed at Galleria, until they seem to have closed their doors recently.  We called the hotel for a shuttle, and waited by the AT&T store until it arrived.  The girls each got some things they needed for their phones, and when the shuttle arrived, we went back to the hotel.  We've spent the evening packing, and expect to be able to leave the hotel at 9:00 AM tomorrow morning when the shuttle leaves for the airport.

    And, except for the trip home, that's about it for our great Western trip this summer.  Anna and Emma are anxious to get back and see their dogs.  They've been watching the Facebook posts from the doggie daycare where they are staying and are very excited when they see them in the pictures.  We've got a long way to travel, back across the continent, but we'll be seeing them soon.