After getting up on Wednesday we walked down and picked up our rental car. We then drove north about 25 miles to Everett, Washington. This is the home of Boeing’s largest plant, what they call the dual-aisle plant. This factory makes all of their planes that come with dual aisles like the 747, 777, 767 and the new 787 Dreamliner. We were lucky enough to be there just hours after the very first production Dreamliner rolled off of the assembly line.

Unfortunately, we were not able to take pictures inside the building or tour. The tour was well worth it though. The building that they build these planes in is just plain huge. It is the largest building in the world by interior space. It is so large that each assembly lines has its own quarter mile long underground walkway under it so that employees can get from one place to another faster. The building even has 3 indoor coffee shops in the middle of things so that employees don’t have to go too far for their morning latte. One lap around the outside is 2 1/2 miles.

The building is adjacent to a county airfield and the visitors center. We got on a bus and drove across the airfield to the plant and walked down into one of the tunnels for the tour. The main part of the tour is the observation deck that we got to in a big freight elevator that took us 4 stories above the assembly floor. This overlooked the 787 Dreamliner lines and the 777 assembly area, and we could see the other lines in the distance. Here are the pictures:

This is a picture as we were driving past the front of the plant. These buildings are the paint buildings for the planes. On the tour they talked about how the paint affects the plane. They usually use around 800 pounds of paint on a plane. Some of the components come pre-painted because they have to be within certain tolerances. The paint is applied electrostatically to the skin of the plane.

A picture as we are driving past the main plant doors. These things are over 300 feet wide and 75 feet high and take over 5 minutes to fully open.

Here is a view from the Visitors Center Parking lot. The pictures of the outside of the building don’t really do it justice. You really need to take the tour to get a good feel for the size of the building.

This is a good picture of some of the finished planes on the runway. I am guessing that these planes are either going through their final workouts before being released to the airlines that bought them or have come in for some maintenance. We saw planes here from all over the world. Air Italia, India Air, Japan Air and a bunch more.

This was one of our first views of Mt Rainier. As we were driving up the clouds kept it hidden but as we waited for the tour we saw it for the first time. We are about 40 miles North of downtown Seattle, which puts us probably around 135 miles from the mountain itself.

I forget how many people work here, but they run 3 full shifts and have a lot of full service options for their employees including a Boeing credit union, dry cleaning, daycare, convenience store, movie rentals and more that I can’t remember. You can see one of the many parking lots in this picture.

Three pictures that show you how big the complex is. People ride bikes to get from place to place in the complex since it is so large.

Here is another picture where you can see Rainier in the distance. Also you can see a small plane getting ready to land. Boeing actually has 2 plant facilities around seattle. The southern plant has a Boeing-owned airfield, however this facility shares the use of the airfield with the county, so small planes like this often have the right of way over large 747s and other Boeing planes. Boeing did pay to strengthen and lengthen the runway for their heavier planes.

Another overview of the airfield, with all of the planes being worked on and ready to go on the other side of the runway.

This is the visitors center. Inside they had a theater and some exhibits about the new Dreamliner and its construction.

After we grabbed a bite to eat we headed back down towards downtown Seattle. Our next stop was the original REI store. We didn’t have too much trouble finding the place, and they had their own parking garage which was nice. That store is incredible. It is one of those stores that you can get lost in and spend days there. They had just about everything. They even had an outdoor track around the building for testing out mountain bikes.

This is the view of some of the landscaping outside of the main doors. The store took up most of a city block and there was lots of green around the building, so much so that you really didn’t feel like you were in the middle of a large city.

These stairs and elevator go down to street level and the parking garage.

If you look at the picture just before this, directly above where I am standing at each post there was a large watch with a location. I took pictures of the ones that I had either been at or would like to go to. The watch here had the local time and listed Mt Rainier.

The watch here had the local time of Mount Everest

This is the Denali (Mt McKinley) watch.

The watch here had the local time of the Great Barrier Reef, which I went diving on in 2006.

These are the front doors of the store. You can see the ice axes that they used for door handles.

Actually named the Hiram M. Chittenden Locks, this was our next stop after REI. These locks are the barrier between the freshwater Lake Washington and the saltwater Puget Sound. The lake is usually 10-15 feet higher than the sound water. There are 2 locking chambers at the locks, a larger one used for larger and commercial traffic and a smaller one for recreational and smaller boat traffic. On this visit to the locks the larger chamber was drained for what looked like repairs. The smaller chamber was open and was in constant use. The public was also welcome to visit the locks and watch their operation. The locks are open 24 hours a day and were very busy when we were there.

On the other side of the waterway from the locks was a fish ladder. This “ladder” is a series of chambers, each about a foot higher than the previous one. This allows salmon to swim up through the ladder from chamber to chamber and make it to the lake on the other side of the locks. This was a lot of fun to watch. There were dozens of salmon and every once in a while you would see one jump through the water to get to the next chamber. Here are the pictures.

Here is a look down into the main locking chamber with the water drained.

This is a view towards the Puget Sound with the locks and dam behind me.

This is the actual dam. I am standing at the lower end of the locks to take this picture.

Here are a number of smaller boats going through the smaller locking chamber. They would fit as many boats in as possible and the signs said that the locks operated 24 hours a day. The public is welcome to walk over the locking gates and to observe the entire process.

This is one of the fish spillways. If you look at the picture of the dam from below it (2 pictures up) you can see 2 jets of water shooting out into the water below the dam. This is what the jets look like from above. These are actually there to help salmon spawn. The spawn will swim through these and get shot out into the saltwater. This helps them in a few ways, it is supposed to help keep them safer with all fo the bubbles to help hide them and also provides a quicker and easier way than going back down the fish ladder.

These are some metal sculptures that were standing near the fish ladder.

Here is the topside of the dam as seen through the metal sculptures.

This is one of the closed spillways. Kyle is looking over the barrier at the fish ladder to try and see some salmon jumping.

The actual fish ladder. You are looking at a couple of steps in the ladder. The L shaped piece of concrete is actuall part of one of the steps. To the right of the L shape is a ’step’ in the ladder. The small chamber before the step is about 8 inches lower than the one above. The fish will swim into the lower chamber, swim around there for a bit then swim real fast and jump up into the next chamber, and repeat the process until they make it all fo the way to the top. The section beyond the metal grate does not have any steps because it is part of the underground observation area below and to the right in the picture.

This is a information display in the observation room. It was well lit so I got a picture, but the rest of the room was dark and no pictures came out enough to show unfortunately. This explains the ladder and its purpose.

These two pictures show the detail of the fish ladder display

Here is the dam and locks from the area near the fish ladder. You can see the spawn jets shooting out pretty good here.

Our next stop was back to the hotel. Once there we parked and walked down to a mall downtown where we got on a tram to go to the Seattle Center. The Seattle Center is an area with some museums, the old worlds fair buildings, the Space Needle and a few other attractions. The elevated train ride through downtown to get there was pretty nice and had some good views.

Once we were at the center, we went up in the space needle, walked around the Science Fiction Hall of Fame and checked out the outside of the Experience Music Project. On to the pictures:

Here is a good view of the space needle from where we got off the elevated train.

I took a couple of shots of the Space Needle as we walked towards it, here is another one framed by a tree.

This is a shot from almost directly beneath the needle. The box-like think with windows is actually a restaurant that is a few hundred feet up.

The next few pictures are all ones I took from on top of the space needle. This one is looking south towards the main part of downtown. Rainier is in the background, almost directly above the white arches of the football stadium which is just to the right of the main downtown buildings. Unfortunately, the camera did not do a good job of picking up Rainier, but we could see it very good that day.

Zoomed in picture of Rainier from the Space Needle. You can also see the football stadium (white arches) and baseball stadium (dark roof) on the right side of the picture.

This is one of the main port areas for shipping, looked at across the Puget Sound. Unfortunately there wern’t any big container ships unloading that day, we did see some at other times though.

Here is one of the buildings from the worlds fair. The whole Seattle Center area was where the fair was located and is the reason the Space Needle was built.

This is looking out west from the Space Needle over the Puget Sound.

Here is a picture of the Olympic Mountains across the Puget Sound. Unfortunately we did not get to go over the the park there, but that is definitely something I want to do in the future.

Looking Northwest from the Space Needle. The Ballard Locks are up this way.

Looking down to the top of the Experience Music Project and the Science Fiction Hall of Fame. You can see the elevated train tracks that actually run through the building in the picture.

Here is a closeup of the roof of the Experience Music Project and Sci-Fi Hall of Fame.

Another closeup of the roof of the Experience Music Project and Sci-Fi Hall of Fame.

Another view of downtown from the Space Needle.

Leaning out and looking straight down from on top of the Space Needle.

This was taken right after we left the Needle, looking straight up one of the legs of the structure.

Self portrait under the Space Needle.

This is the entrance to the experience music project from street level.

A self portrait outside the Experience Music Project entrance.

This is a picture of the reflective metal on the outside of the building.

A cool shot of the Space Needle in the reflection from the Experience Music Project.

Another self portrait with the Space Needle.

Kyle and I in the reflection from the building.