Where I Live, Part One

Would you like to know about where I'm living now? Too bad. I'm going to tell you anyway.

To make a short story long, remember going to Seattle to visit your Uncle Paul and Aunt Shelly? Remember watching the salmon in the locks there, swimming up the fish ladders? Well, you were facing the wrong way. If you had turned around and looked behind you instead of looking at the fish, you would have seen a long line of hills. That line of hills is called Phinney Ridge, and that's where I live.

Here's a map.

As you can see, it's a long way from your house to my house. In fact, it says here (in Google, no less) that it's 838 miles. Which would mean it f you left your house at 8:00 in the morning and drive straight to Seattle, stopping only for gas, meals and potty breaks, you wouldn't get there until almost midnight that night. But at least you'd finally be in Seattle. Which, after all is the whole point.

PS: You could also fly here an about an hour and a half.

Of course, once you're in Seattle, you have to figure out how to get to my house. Which is a little harder than it sounds.

For one thing, Seattle is a big city. There are more than half a million people here, about as many as San Jose. But unlike San Jose, where things are spread out, everything here is smooshed into a much smaller space, so it's a true city, like San Francisco or the downtown part of San Jose.

For another thing, there's a lot of water here. See for yourself. Seattle is one
of the two the largest cities on a huge bay called Puget Sound. The other large

city, in case you're wondering (and I'm sure some nosy Smarty Pants types are wondering that this very minute) is Vancouver, which is across the border in Canada and doesn't appear on this map. Vancouver is also a very fun city. But it's not Seattle. So stop asking me about Vancouver all the darn time and talk about Seattle again. And if those people in Vancouver think they're so smart, they can get their own map.


In fact, the closer you get to Seattle, the more water there is. In addition to great fishing and boating (but no swimming, the water in Puget sound or any of the lakes here is very cold, much colder than the ocean is in California), this makes it very hard to get around the city. Seattle is full of hills (more about those in a minute) and the roads twist around, and of course they have to cross over all this water, so it's kind of hard to get from one place to another sometimes.

Pretty much everything you see on this last map is part of Seattle. And if you look closely, you'll see a lake under the number 99. That's Green Lake.

To give you an idea of the scale on the map, Green Lake is only about six blocks from my house. It only takes about fifteen minutes to walk there, but it takes almost an hour to walk around. That's a pretty big lake. More about Green Lake in a minute.


Here's one more map, showing the part of town I live in.

The arrow labeled "A" is my house (click for an online map you can zoom in and out of).

The green line represents the parts of town I've been to on my bike. As you can see, I've only been to a very small part of Seattle.






Here's a picture of the little house I'm living in now. Only one bedroom, plus an upstairs area you could't stand up in without bumping your head. Well, you could. But I can't. Believe me, I've tried. Your dad would have a real problem.

As you can see, it's very green here. That's because it rains a lot in Seattle. No, I mean a LOT. It rains more days than it doesn't. That's a lot of days. And a lot of rain. But it keeps everything green and growing. And growing. My front yard thinks it want to be a jungle.







The picture above is taken from the middle of the street in front of my house (there's a sidewalk too, but I cropped it out of the photo). But if you walk out my door and turn right, this is what you'd see:

The Astute Observer (that's you) will notice several interesting things about this picture:

• That's a steep hill. It's so steep, in fact, that there are treads (not quite stairs, but scooped-out places in the cement) built into the sidewalk so people don't fall and slide on their behinds all the way down to the water-- Ker-SPLASH!
  
  
• That's a big lake. It's called Green Lake. It's-- oh, wait. We already covered that Green Lake. Sorry.
  
  
• It's right out my front door. Cool!
  
  
• And there's a set of mountains (with snow!) on the other side of the lake. You can go hiking there.

So that's what you see out my door to the right. If you turn to the left, it looks like this:
That's the view up the street. If you walk up the block to the top of the hill (Greenwood Avenue North on your map), you see this:














Yup, another hill, more water, and more mountains.

These mountains are called the Cascades and are home to an (inactive) volcano called Mt. Rainier)

You can also see a line of blue at the bottom of the mountain which is the Shipping Canal, which is where the Ballard Locks are, which is where you saw the salmon.



So, I live in Seattle in a small house near the top of a hill in the city with a lot of water and mountains nearby. And that's the end of this post. Next time, I'll tell you about some of my adventures in the city.