Late yesterday afternoon, I walked over to World Gym in the Convention Center, just three blocks from my hotel. It's supposedly the gayest gym in Seattle. It's also perhaps the strangest. It's very large, but it's split into myriads of oddly shaped and placed rooms in a public concourse. As I walked into the concourse, past beauty salons and newspaper stalls, I saw two men stretching in the coridoor. Then I passed an enormous, glass-fronted aerobics studio where one man was dancing around all by himself. I almost walked into the most obvious space, but it turned out to be the women's workout room, and there was a sign saying to walk upstairs, which I did, passing lockers on the stairwell (?). Finally, I found the main entrance, and the main weights room, the latter which also included a bunch of desks for the sales people. Weird.

Anyway, in San Francisco, the gay gyms are hopping on Friday night - the atmosphere is more like that of a dance club than a gym. Here it was more like a hotel gym - hardly anyone there. But undisputedly, almost all of the men who were actually there looked gay.

I've been feeling very lucky since getting to Seattle. Lucky that I can afford to stay over an extra couple of days, and lucky that complete strangers want to hang out with me. The latter comes from having such a public website, and, of course, announcing beforehand where I'm going. Last night I got together with a man named Dennis for dinner in a wonderful Vietnamese restaurant in Capitol Hill. Dennis and I turned out to have a lot in common, and similar sensibilities. It was just nice to be able to come somewhere like Seattle and share a great meal with a nice guy.

It was another gorgeous morning, today, and for the first time you could make out the Olympic Mountains to the West and the Cascades to the East. There was almost a touch of Fall though, as I set off North on I5, in the pale sky, the lengthy shadows and the long, still streaks of clouds on the horizon. I'd asked a few people about what would make a nice day's drive out of Seattle to see some mountains, and the consensus seemed to be Stephens Pass, along Route 2, in the Cascades. That's where I was heading when all of a sudden I realized that the hazy, barely visible white streaks high up on the far northern horizon was sunlight reflecting off the shoulders of a massive snow-covered mountain. Still not sure which mountain it was - Mt Baker, I think.

Anyway, it was too far off for me, so I took the exit for Route 2 and drove into the foothills. After an hour, the foothills started to rear up into jagged mountains of 6,000 feet, and the road started to climb. There were lots of spectacular, craggy shapes, but no obvious places to stop to take a photograph. The one place I did stop was Deception Falls, where I took a walk around the nature trail through deep, dank woods. The undergrowth was fantastic; everything was covered with moss, even the tree branches. Many of the big, old trees had fallen, and new branches had shot up out of the dead trunks, rich with still living foliage. The overwhelming impression was of plant scrambling over plant to grab its share of light.

At Deception Falls

I was upon Stephens Pass without knowing it, and it was a major dissapointment. It wasn't really scenic at all. It was, of course, in a pass between mountains - not particularly striking mountains, and all you could see where the few bland mountain tops around you. I decided that rather than heading back, then, I'd continue on to Leavenworth, and shoot down to I90 and complete the Cascades Loop. It was much further than I'd intended to drive, but I wanted to see more scenery, damnit!

Next place I stopped was not to take photos, but to load up on caffeine, because my heavy eyelids were starting to droop. It happened to be a store that sold home-made chocolate, so I bought Brett some chocolate-covered banana slices to fatten him up a little. The parking lot was filled with wild mountain women in their pickup trucks, beating their kids silly. Or that's how it seemed to me, anyway.

A Babbling Brook

I continued on, through some ugly towns. You'd think that in pretty countryside like this, people would make an effort to build pretty towns. But most of them are eyesores, no planning, no zoning, like New Jersey strip malls. It reminds me of an early 19th century book by Fanny Trollope, "The Domestic Manners of the Americans", where she wrote, for her English readers, an appalled account of how everything in America was just geared for survival. Maybe the only difference now is that everything in these towns is just about convenience, with their Blockbuster Video stores, and big, colorful ugly gas stations. Oh, I should mention that one of these towns was called, most appropriately, Startup.

The only town that had any pretensions to prettiness was Leavenworth, and that went too far. It no doubt has a true German heritage, but now it's become a kind of cross between a quaint Bavarian town and Disneyworld, with all manner of faux-German gingerbread houses, and other kitsch designed to draw tourists. It was crowded though, so I guess it works.

Finally, at Skykomish, I passed through some beautiful mountain scenery again, and found a great place to take photographs.

By the time I got back to my hotel in Seattle, I was starving. I'd had virtually nothing to eat since breakfast except for half of Brett's chocolate covered bananas (sorry Brett!) So I ambled down a few blocks to Tullys for a pasta salad and a coke. Seattle's really a lovely city for strolling. The down-town has an airy, affluent feel to it, with cute little parks and fountains every block or so, and interesting looking streets sloping down to the waterfront. I found myself wishing that I wasn't going home tomorrow. I'd like to stay longer and get to know Seattle better again. Unlike the other times I've visited Seattle, this time I "get" why people like it so much.