The Puget Sound is an exceptionally beautiful area around Seattle.
Viewing it with the naked eye, or in this case, viewing it with my eyes “clothes’d” (meaning covered by my eyelids…not naked….”clothes’d”) for lack of a better picture 😩, hyper activates my senses.
I can See the Sound, Smell the Sound, Hear the Sound, and Hear the See…..well, the Sea. 😁
My First Visit To Seattle
During the Summer of 1967, prior to my Senior year in High School, my parents decided to make a 21-day trek, by car, from St. Louis, Missouri, to The Great Northwest.
It had been a boyhood dream of my Dad’s to see Crater Lake in Oregon. So from that single desire, Mom and Dad started planning the trip which gradually expanded to cover nine States.
So we spent hours riding in the car to get to each destination and see the things Mom and Dad wanted to see. We drove through and saw Denver and the Rocky Mountains in Colorado. The Grand Tetons and Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming. Crater Lake, Mt. Hood, and Bend in Oregon. Seattle, the Puget Sound, the Space Needle, the monorail, the floating bridges over Lake Washington, in Washington. Boise, Idaho. The Badlands, the Painted Desert, and Mt. Rushmore in South Dakota.
The hours riding in the car were merciless, but seeing all those beautiful and varied places, somehow, made it all worth it….(that is, until we had to get back in the car and drive straight back to St. Louis, with not much to see along the way).
But that’s when I got the travel bug and there were many aspects of doing a road trip that I liked. So I thank Mom and Dad for that.
And it was during that trip that I also decided that someday I would come back to Seattle to live, not just to visit again.
The Sea, the mountains, the sounds and sights around the Harbor, an abundance of greenery (conifer and deciduous trees) and varied species of flowers, the comparatively mild temperatures year round, no stifling humidity like in the Midwest, and the overall beauty of it all cinched it for me. I wanted to make it my home some day.
I finally arrived here to take up permanent residence in 2005.
Criss-crossing the U.S.
But before I came here to live, I worked in the Air Force for 20 years and then NSA for seven years. While I was in the Air Force, I moved 21 times in 20 years. I lived in South Korea for 12 of those 20 years and in Maryland, Texas, California, North Dakota, Colorado and Florida during the other eight years.
Every time I would move to my next station (base), I had the choice to fly or drive. Most of the time I drove because I wanted to see all the States from the ground. So during that 27-year time frame, prior to moving to Seattle, I criss-crossed the country several times, driving through all of the States except the six Northeastern States: Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Massachusetts and Connecticut.
Somewhere along that pathway through life I started favoring much shorter road trips. I preferred to fly to a place, rent a car and do short road trips in that locale to see whatever was of interest to me. I still got the great experience without the drudgery of excessive miles.
Recent Past Travels
For the past four years, I’ve been traveling in the U.S. and Europe, and enjoying the adventure and knowledge that each trip brought.
The places I chose to go were always tied to the venues where my favorite singer, Lizz Wright, was going to be performing. In a previous post, I said that she’s “the icing on my travel cake”.
And she was.
I enjoyed seeing the places I went, but I always found it exceptionally special to go and hear her sing at least one of those nights on the trip. The rest of the time was spent sightseeing, taking photographs, trying delicious new foods, biking or hiking or walking, playing basketball, and scribbling my thoughts on paper, about the trip, for the post I would write when I got back home.
Upcoming Travels Around The Puget Sound
But, for the time being, I decided to travel locally, for a while, right around here in the Seattle area. There are still a lot of beautiful places here, which I haven’t made a priority to see yet. Shame on me. So adventures await!
So I decided to start my adventures by traveling throughout the beautiful Puget Sound area. (Btw, I just found out that Oprah has a house on Orcas Island, one of the San Juan Islands in the Puget Sound area.) That’s one of the islands I’ll be going to see when I start my “Sound Bytes” series of posts.
In addition to travel, music is important to me too. Especially, Lizz’s music.
I have this endless fascination and admiration for Lizz Wright and her music. I associate many great things, events, people and places with her music. Listening to her sing is not merely important to me. It’s essential. I listen to her music all the time and I never get tired of listening to any of her songs. She’s the only singer whose music I feel that way about.
There is something in the nature of her voice and her music, that is beautiful beyond compare, and it soothes and anchors me. There is authentic passion, sincerity and reverence in her voice as if she has personally experienced everything that she sings about. And maybe she has. But that authenticity is what commands my attention. This passion for her music will never die.
Perhaps you have a favorite singer, musician, comedian, or actress, et cetera, so you know what I mean. But if you don’t, I’ll explain it another way, with the following anecdote, to help you understand.
“There was this Thesaurus Company in Seattle. One day, in their warehouse, they were loading thesauruses, for delivery, onto a couple of trucks.
After they were all loaded, one truck went out one exit, turned right and went around the corner. The other truck went out another exit, turned left and went around the corner.
Unfortunately, the two trucks accidentally collided with each other! Both trucks were totaled and there were thesauruses strewn everywhere. They were scattered all over the sidewalks and the street!!
Passersby were surprised, shocked, stupefied, bewildered, shaken…..😩
That’s what happens to me when my eyes and ears collide (in a good way 😄) with the beauty of the Puget Sound and with the beauty of the sound of Lizz’s music!!
Both Sounds inspire me, command my attention, make my power surge, light my sky, move me, take me places………get it?
So one rainy Sunday afternoon, I was stirring some tapioca pudding, listening to “Lizzles!” (a playlist of Lizz’s songs) and thinking about traveling around the Sound, I knew I wanted to pair together……..
“The Beauty of The Sound” (pix or video clips of the Puget Sound area),
with “The Beauty of The Sound” (Lizz and her music),
………and call it “Sound Bytes”. 😀
I love both “Sounds” and I want to share them.
So as I started planning my travel around the Sound…………
I learned there are five major basins (see map below) which make up the Puget Sound. (I got this map from Wikipedia.)
That little waterway (on the map above) leading away from the “S” in Seattle (above), is where the Hiram M. Chittenden canal locks in Ballard are located.
The photo below shows the Canal Locks, on the waterway that leads out from Seattle to the Central Basin of the Puget Sound you see in the distance. The canal locks were built to move vessels between Lake Washington, Lake Union and Puget Sound.
In the background you see the Olympic Mountain Range, to the West.
So the next few posts I publish here will be all about “the Sound”….
The Puget Sound
and……
“The Wright Sound”
Lizz Wright and her music
You’ll see them as Sound Bytes #1, Sound Bytes #2, and so on. It’s what I call my “Sound Bytes” Series.
Hope you enjoy them!
P.S. I decided to make this list (below) of each post in the Sound Bytes Series and place it at the end of each post, to help you navigate more easily to and from each post:
- Sound Bytes (Intro)
- Sound Bytes #1….”Seattle and the Sounds”
- Sound Bytes #2….”Sound Views from Anacortes”
- Sound Bytes #3….”The Wright Sound (Lizz Wright)”
- Sound Bytes #4….”San Juan Island”
- Sound Bytes #5….”Orcas Island”
- Sound Bytes #5….”Orcas Island (Continued)”
- Sound Bytes #6….”The Finale”
