On Saturday, for the first meal of the day (I’m refusing to call anything after noon “breakfast”), we walked to Coastal Kitchenfor some really great Mexican inspired scrambled eggs and hash browns.  On the way there we passed the very first “starbucks experiment.”  For those not in the know, Starbucks has become aware that it is now associated with “large corporations” and so it is rebranding select stores across the country to be devoid of the Starbucks name.  This one (the first in the experiment) was renamed “15th Avenue Coffee & Tea” since it was on 15th avenue (and sold coffee and tea).

In addition to the delicious breakfast, Coastal Kitchen offered us up some Marion Berry to wake up and get energized. 

We loaded up on carbs because we intended to go on a hiking adventure.  We hiked down to the pier and boarded a ferry to Bremerton because Bainbridge seemed like it was all shopping. 

We kept seeing these neon things in the water.  Before long we realized they were jellyfish.

When we got off the ferry we went into the hampton inn and tried to get some information from the front desk.  They were really rude for some reason, but eventually produced a xeroxed hand-drawn map pointing us toward “evergreen park”…

After walking through neighborhoods decimated by the economy (?) we made it to a very small park with some evergreens.  We went down to the water and noticed a plethora of hermit crabs and snails. 

We took a different route back through the town.  Passing by the beautiful Bremerton Flower Program (note the sarcasm – to the left of this picture, the other side of the garden, was just dirt):

We walked into the heart of Bremerton, but the only souls we encounterred were those of the ominous seagulls and crows cackling overhead.  As we traversed the hills we fully expected to be greeted by a mob of zombies.  This photo was taken in the center of town.  In which nobody was around.  At 6pm.  On a Saturday.  In the middle of town. 

We got back to the dock and discovered that we’d have to wait another hour to take the ferry back.  We were trapped in the ghost town for dinner.  We ate at the local pizza shop, helmed by 3 brothers who looked like they hadn’t had a customer all day.

After deboating the ferry we hiked up to the space needle.  It was a saturday night, so the needle was flush with tourists, but the crowd management was impeccable compared to my (shitty) experience at the Empire State Building.  We took some night photos of Seattle. 

I forgot my gorillapod and so I borrowed Byron’s.  However, his was designed differently and somewhere between 520′ in the air and his apartment on Capital Hill I lost the little “slider” piece, making my gorillapod worthless.  I think that was my only casualty of the trip.

While we were goofing around at the base I took some shots of the needle.  I’d noted earlier on the ferry how low the clouds were; like we could jump up and touch them.  Well, when I looked at my photo (not the one below) I realized that we could see the shadow of the needle on the clouds above from the spotlights below.  The shadow was crisp – implying the cloud cover was lower than we thought.  Since the needle isn’t very tall (as far as tall buildings go) I wondered if they worried building it any higher would put the observation deck in the clouds!