Adoring fanbase, I’d like you to meet the longest blog post in the history of personkind. At least in my book.

I tripped so hard. I mean, you know, I went someplace. And it was great.

I ventured with Steve to his home turf of Maple Valley, 30 minutes outside of Seattle. We ventured there, and to Portland (um, amazing,) as well as to Yakima (eastern washington) for one heck of a family reunion.

The trip began with an extremely jet lagged roust about Seattle, in which we crammed the city’s best into one stumbly fantastic day:

The Seattle public library with giant red hall to bathroom thing:

A tour of the city’s underground (the place burnt to the ground in the late 1800’s; instead of, you know, cleaning up, they built over it.) A chipper tour guide was happy to lead this tourist through the muck.

Behold, the Space Needle. All Spacey and needle-y. Not pictured are the Science fiction museum, where one can gaze thoughtfully at the life-size replicas of Yoda and marvel at the tininess of authentic Star Wars dress things; and the Experience Music Project where one can view nearly every outfit Hendrix sweat through.

Next, we were joined by Steve’s family. It was then imperative to play mini-golf, which Some of us took very seriously.

It was then imperative to ride the ferris wheel. Some of us were scared.

Nextly, we (Steve, Steve’s family, my sideboob and I) ventured to the top of the Space needle just in time for a stellar sunset!

We then dined on fresh fishy dishes in the rotating restaurant –

and topped the dinner off with a dessert that smoked like so. (It’s dry ice. Don’t freak out. It’s not REALLY not fire.)

The next day, we ventured to Southern Washington to visit Steve’s grandparents in the nursing home (pictures not provided, for obvious reasons.) We stopped at his uncle’s house for dinner, where Someone beat his Son in ping pong, like, Hard.  (Also to be noted downstage right is Jake, the family dog. He is blue. No, he really is.)

His uncle’s house boasted the most impressive overgrown swimming pool I have ever seen.

After dinner, in celebration of the superbly beautiful day, we shot Guns. I hit the target once. Take That, Brothers Brunstetter.

From there, we headed off the Portland, OR – where neither of us had ever been. With no real plans besides getting lost and getting to know the city we’d heard so much about, we selected a random hotel which turned out to be quite aesthetically pleasing.

Steve called a good friend from college, and before we knew it, we were neck deep in a dive bar: $4 cocktails, go-go dancers dangling from the ceiling.

The next day, we fought the Tired of the previous night’s debauchery. I took a small nap on an anonymous counter.

We wandered around (it is only the best wandering city EVER) and finally made our way up to Washington Park, which sits above the city and holds a fantastic rose garden.

Driving home later, Steve manned it up and ran against traffic, through the grass, to retrieve the gas cap to his Mother’s car, which took off into the wind when we sped away from the most Nastiest Subway ever.

The next day, we took off to Eastern Washington for Steve’s family reunion in Yakima, a sort of desert-ish place. To get there, you are forced to spend an hour driving through THE MOST AMAZING MOUNTAINS EVER. Ho, hum. Life is so hard. We stopped here because it was pretty, and perhaps because we had to pee.

The family reunion was at a charming little camp ground thing, which was brand new to me, having never been camping save nights in my own backyard. Activities included eating, eating, chatting, messing with the irksomely bratty little girl pictured below, playground-ing, and malciously attacking the ducks.

The next evening, we took a red eye out of Seattle which left at Sunset. The whole time I was in Seattle it was a bit hazy – I kept asking, where the heck is Mt. Ranier?! Never got to see it, UNTIL –

See that? Freaking amazing. God bless America.

Don’t worry. I have no serious aspirations for travel journalism.