Hi there,

Happy October—my favorite month of the year! My birthday is in 3 weeks and I spent my first day home from vacation yesterday with Mr. Sweat Out the Small Stuff and his girls apple picking…..can’t get any more October than that!

Today I got in an 8 miler as my last long run before the Staten Island Half Marathon next weekend. Another reason I love October. And Mr. SOTSS will be running too. #winwin

I’m happy to say after 8 days of togetherness, we’re still a thing. LOL. It was easy for the most part although there were a few moments that we had to work a little harder than others and of course nothing was my fault because this is my blog right? 🙂 Since we started dating almost 2 and a half years ago, the most consecutive days we’d spent together was around 5 or 6 so this was a big deal.

We visited Seattle, Vancouver and Jasper and Banff National Parks in the Canadian Rockies all in a week. We packed in so much that we literally were on the go the entire trip.

Here’s  PART 1 of my recap!

Day 1-Travel Day: Started off with Duncan banging his leg and limping a few hours before we were headed to the airport so I bailed on my long run and quickly took him to the vet. Xrays revealed just a soft tissue injury and no broken bones thank god! And so my sister-in-law got Duncan along with his pain meds and anti-inflammatory meds. She ended up being sick all week so they both rested together. We discovered our flight was delayed a few hours meaning we’d miss our connection in Minneapolis but we were able to re-book to a direct flight that would get us to Seattle only an hour after we would have arrived. This was so awesome because I was able to squeeze in a run. It wasn’t the 10 miler I had originally planned. It was a 2.5 miler on my sister-in-law’s treadmill.

But it made me feel better and Duncan was able to lay on the couch beside me. And since Mr. SOTSS ran 12 miles that morning he was tired so he sat on the couch and watched some college football for the 30 minutes I ran.

The flight was long and I tried my best to amuse myself since Mr. SOTSS was either watching a movie or napping.

I’m not a good traveler. I get antsy and uncomfortable within the first hour. We arrived in Seattle about 8pm and took the Light Link Rail to our hotel and just crashed.

Day 2-Seattle’s Pike Place Market, Bainbridge Island and the Washington State Fair: We started with a walk down to get breakfast at this cool joint called Biscuit Bitch. So delicious and I highly recommend if you ever visit Seattle. Just go early because it gets crowded. Then we strolled around the waterfront and Pike Place Market before hopping on a ferry to Bainbridge Island in the afternoon.

Then it was time to rent our car and drive about 40 minutes south of Seattle to Puyallup Washington for the Washington State Fair.

The reason for this is because the band Train was playing and Mr. SOTSS bought tickets for me as an early birthday present. The fair was fun. We ate fair food and played fair games. He even won me this cute pig. He won this little turtle too. I named him Sheldon. But within a few minutes of taking the pic Sheldon fell out of his back pocket and we’re hoping a kid found him and gave him a good home. The Train concert was AWESOME!

Day 3-Space Needle and EMP Museum: We actually popped back over to Pike Place to try and actually enter the original Starbucks but it was just as crowded as it was the day before so we took a picture of the outside and walked over to the Space Needle and the EMP Museum which are right next to each other.

I was getting cranky about something or another and saw a 7-Eleven and insisted we stop because I knew a slurpee would snap me out of my crank.

Wouldn’t ya know the flavor I wanted shot out all watery?! It was sort of funny actually.

I really enjoyed the design of the exhibit that you walk through before entering the elevator to take you to the top of the Space Needle. It was beautifully designed and interesting to learn about how the structure was built.

And the EMP Museum also had some beautifully designed exhibits. I’m a graphic designer and get really giddy over design treatments and typography…especially the exhibit about horror movies.

We made our way to the train station and hopped on the Amtrak to Vancouver. After breezing through customs we hopped in a cab for a 10 minute ride to our hotel.

You can go here for Part 2 of my recap.

Have you ever been to Seattle?
Do you like museums?
Are you a good traveler?
Do you like horror movies?