Spring Kayaking in Mercer Slough

April 23 was a sunny Sunday afternoon, though a bit cool - temperatures hovering in the mid-to-upper 50s. Henry and Dad went out on Mercer Slough and then out in Lake Washington on a kayaking journey. We saw turtles, geese, and some very young goslings.

The goslings are just to the right of the mother goose

Jack's Curveball

Jack started against Skyline on Thursday April 19. His first five innings were nearly flawless, with his curveball breaking sharply and mixed in well with his other pitches. Newport was clinging to a 1-0 lead, but Jack tired in the sixth inning and gave up 4 runs. Skyline wound up winning, 4-3.

Here is some video of his pitching:

2018 Train Trip - Post 3 (of 3) - Chicago !!

We arrived in our final city on our trip on Thursday morning - we'd reboarded the train at 10pm Wednesday night, got settled into our cozy cabin, and fell asleep until morning. We awoke with the sunrise over the farm fields and pulled into Chicago's Union Station around 10am.

We spent a day-and-a-half in Chicago - the rest of the day Thursday and Friday until our flight left O'Hare at 6pm. Highlights included:

1. Museum of Science and Industry. Lots of neat exhibits, including a coal mine, a model train exhibit that traces a track from Chicago to Seattle, genetics, ice, etc. Unfortunately, the museum was TEEMING with elementary school field trips, so we wound up only spending a little more than an hour in the museum, but then went to find some geocaches in the park outside.

2. We went out to a new park (in Chicago, "new" is defined as anything that wasn't there when Mary Jo and John left in 1993) in the lake that used to be a little-used airfield. It juts out into the lake behind the planetarium, and there were some neat geocaches out there.

3. Friday morning, we went to the top of the John Hancock tower to see the views

4. Finally, we took an architecture tour of the el stations in the loop. We had a great guide, and learned a ton about the development of the L and the design of different stations.

By 3:00 we took the train out to O'Hare and flew home. All in all a great trip!!

Our spacious accomodations on Amtrak!

Henry in the train corridor

Getting off at Union Station

Model train exhibit at Museum of Science & Industry - Chicago

Model train exhibit at Museum of Science & Industry - Seattle

Henry at Science & Industry

Geocaching at Science & Industry

Chicago Skyline 

Geocaching

View from Hancock Observatory Deck

Architecture Tour of El Stations

Architecture Tour of El Stations

2018 Train Trip: Post 2 - Memphis, TN

Our train arrived late at night in Memphis and we took a taxi to our hotel, just steps away from the historic (and quite loud!) Beale Street, home of blues clubs and music galore.

After getting some well-earned rest, we spent the day Wednesday in Memphis. We did four things that Memphis is known for:

1) The National Civil Rights Museum - a world-class, multi-million dollar museum has been put up at the Lorraine Hotel, the site of MLK's assassination 50 years ago last week. It walks you through the history of the Civil Rights movement, with the museum ending at the hotel room Martin Luther King was staying in and which he walked out onto the balcony from, when he was killed.

2) Memphis Barbeque! Pulled pork for lunch and ribs (for Dad) and fried catfish (for Henry) for dinner. Yumm!

3) The Mississippi River. We walked across a footbridge from Tennessee into Arkansas. It's about a 20 minute walk across the bridge, with the rushing Mississippi beneath us.

4) Music, music, music. We walked through the Smithsonian exhibit at the Rock and Soul museum - right at the intersection of Highway 61 and Beale Street. It traced the history of Memphis-related music from the early Delta Blues through Elvis Presley. A very well-done museum; you get a personal headset on your way in, and there are codes along the way that you punch in to hear about the exhibit you're looking at and/or some music from that era.

After spending the full day in Memphis, we reboarded the train at 10pm for our final destination!

The Civil Rights Museum. The floral wreath marks the spot on the balcony where MLK was shot

BBQ Joint for Lunch

The Memphis skyline from the bridge across the Mississippi

Henry at the border - and entering into his 30th state!

Rock & Soul Museum

Memphis-Style Ribs

2018 Train Trip: Post 1 - New Orleans to Memphis

For Spring Break, Dad and Henry took another train trip through America - this time the famed "City of New Orleans" train from New Orleans to Chicago. We got off in Memphis so we got a chance to explore three different cities along the way.

We started in New Orleans, where we spent a couple of days and then boarded the train to Memphis, rolling through the swamps and bayous north of New Orleans and then through Mississippi.

View of the French Quarter and the Mississippi River from our hotel in New Orleans

We took a couple of streetcars to get around town 

The National World War II Museum is in New Orleans - a very big complex where we spent a few hours. Here's Henry manning the periscope on a submarine in the South China Sea. Unfortunately, the Japanese sunk it a few minutes later.

The French Quarter

A rug shop had a cadre of about a dozen cats - including Emerald and Wilson look-alikes in the window

Walking around Lafayetee Cemetery, where people are buried in crypts above ground since the elevation is so low. People are dying to get in here!

Boarding the train

Swamps of New Orleans

Mississippi Delta - the most fertile farmland on the planet and the birthplace of the Blues

Washington State Geography Bee Finals

As the winner of his school's Geo Bee, Henry took a test and then qualified for the State Finals in Tacoma in early April. One winner would move on from this Geo Bee to the national finals in Washington D.C.

All participants got eight (different) questions. They were very tough questions! Henry got six correct, which was not enough to move on to the next round. Nonetheless, he did great to get six correct (not to mention even getting to the finals in the first place!)

Some of the success is the randomness of which questions you get, though everyone certainly did get a few hard ones. Here are seven of the questions Henry had (we can't remember the eighth one). He got five of these right. Answers at the bottom.

1. Which state borders more others states: Delaware or Illinois?
2. Which has a larger GDP, Pennsylvania or Norway?
3. Which state includes a former Swedish colony and a city called Wilmington with the Brandywine River?
4. What country's largest city is Montevideo?
5. The national bird of Estonia builds its nest with mud - is it the Barn Owl or Barn Swallow?
6. The largest city in Iceland recently instituted laws restricting cars, what city is this?
7. A study came out in December showing that wild boars are harming palm oil in what Asian country bordered by Thailand and Brunei?

Answers: Illinois, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Uruguay, Barn Swallow, Reykjavik, and Malaysia.
Henry got all of them correct except #3 and #7.

Jack Versus Eastlake

Jack was the starting pitcher for their game against Eastlake in early April. It was a cold, rainy night, but he pitched well, shutting them out through the first four innings to allow Newport to take a 4-0 lead. At that point, Jack had given up just 1 run in his past 12 innings. But in the 5th, the cold and wetness started to get to Jack; he gave up a couple of hits and the team made a few errors with wet baseballs, and he wound up giving up 4 runs before being taken out. Newport wound up going to the 7th tied 4-4 and gave up the winning run on a wild pitch with two outs in the 7th.

New Mountain Bikes!

Henry has become very interested in mountain biking, and we've gone to a few local trails on weekends now that the weather is getting warmer. We decided to invest in a couple of true mountain bikes to enable us to do the trails easier. Here's Henry with one of the new bikes, including his first ride off into the distance on one.