Four amigos met at the Seattle waterfront this morning.
We rode our e-bikes along the bike trail to Elliott Bay marina where we met up with a fifth amigo for lunch.
I took the G-line bus along Madison Street to the waterfront. There goes my bus, actually, but it does not matter. It’s only 6 minutes between buses, so there is no need to even look at the schedule, or worry that you might miss your bus and wait a long time for the next one.It’s a short walk from the 1st Avenue bus stop to Colman Dock, also called Pier 52, the primary ferry terminal in Seattle. That’s the Kaleetan ferry, just leaving for Bainbridge Island. The Kaleetan went into service in early 1968 serving the Seattle-Bainbridge Island route. Over the years it has been upgraded and it has also served the Seattle-Bremerton route and the Anacortes-San Juan Islands route.
Our rendezvous point for starting the bike ride was Molly Moon Ice Cream up ahead. I’m stopping for a moment to admire Buster Simpson’s public artwork called “Anthropomorphic Dolos*”. Dolosse* is a South African invention, first deployed in 1964 on the breakwater of East London, a South African port city. * A dolos (plural: dolosse) is a wave-dissipating concrete block used in great numbers as a form of coastal management. It is a type of tetrapod. Weighing up to 8 tonnes (8.8 short tons), dolosse are used to build revetments for protection against the erosive force of waves from a body of water. [From Wikipedia]We pedaled northbound along the Waterfront bike path and the North bike connection. [Sources: Seattle Department of Transportation, Elliott Bay Connections, Seattle Office of the Waterfront and Civic Projects. Esri, Google, Chris Kaeser / The Seattle Times]
Look! No Alaskan Way Viaduct in sight. We’re on our way, on the bike path along Alaskan Way (originally Railroad Avenue, until 1936), and the major north-south street that runs along the Elliott Bay waterfront. I don’t have my own e-bike, so I picked up a Lime bike for rent that was on the sidewalk near Molly Moon Ice Cream. ($1 to unlock plus 43 cents per minute).Irises in the flower beds that line the promenade on the waterfront.This is further up north along Alaskan Way, just past Pier 66 on the left. The construction work (of the overwalk and the aquarium extension) along Alaskan Way has been completed, but not all the paving work for the intersections and bike lanes.A brief stop by Myrtle Edwards park with its 1.25-mile winding bike and pedestrian paths along Elliott Bay, offering beautiful views of the Olympics Mountains. There’s a Carnaval cruise ship in the distance at the Pier 91 cruise terminal. It was scheduled to depart at 3.30 pm for its ‘Alaska Inside Passage Glacier’ round trip.We reached our destination: Maggie Bluffs restaurant with its outdoor patio with views of Elliot Bay Marina.
