Baseball

Seattle just gets cooler and cooler all the time. Mike and I went to see the Seattle Mariner's on Monday night! It was our first major league baseball game, and I have to say, it was still a little boring, but much better than other baseball games we've been to. It was a LDS friends/family night, so we got discounted tickets and went with some other people from our ward. It was great getting to know some more new people. We rode the light rail up to the baseball stadium, and I was really surprised by how big it was. I'm bad at estimating, but I'm pretty sure it's bigger than the BYU football stadium. It wasn't filled, but there were a lot of people there. It's surprising how much more fun a game is when there's so many people cheering with you. We had a blast, and even though the Mariner's lost, I might actually want to go again!

A little bit of Seattle-including a troll

Seattle is such a big and interesting city! We haven't seen very much of it yet, but I thought I'd share what we have seen so far.

The first Sunday we were here, Mike's cousin was kind enough to invite us to dinner with his family. It was a fun evening, and at the end the told us about a little park not too far from their house where we could go see the sunset on the Puget Sound.

Beautiful

Sunset on the Sound

Later that week we decided to go see the Ballard Locks and find the Troll Bridge. The locks are where boats going upriver come through. The lower part of the river is literally lower, so the locks provide an enclosed area that they can flood with water and get up to the same water level as the upper part of the river. It's also where the salmon ladder is so the locks wouldn't disrupt the annual migration of the salmon upriver. The main salmon migration doesn't happen until midsummer so we only saw one lonely salmon.

Boat coming through

We saw some ducks trying to get through with the boat.

In process of raising the water level

One lonely salmon

The fish ladder designed to help the salmon swim upriver

We also found the Troll Bridge. Mike's sister Melanie is on her mission in New York, but when she found out we were moving to Seattle, she told us we had to go see the Troll Bridge. We managed to find it under the Aurora Bridge. The city had an art contest to decide what to put under the bridge, and the troll easily beat out every other idea (who wouldn't want a troll under the bridge?). Turns out the area has a high Scandinavian population, and trolls are a part of Scandinavian legends. This one is based off of the troll in Billy Goats Gruff, and yes, that is an actual Volkswagen in his left hand.

Yes, the troll is located on Troll avenue

Mike running away

Me running away. He's scary.

After we saw the troll, we ate at a Greek/Middle Eastern restaurant nearby. It was my first time having a gyro, and it was pretty good. Mike enjoyed his, and the rest of mine (it was huge!) We've had a pretty fun time so far, and can't wait to see more!