Saturday

Lunch at a vegetarian Thai restaurant.




The coolest plant shop I've ever seen -- The Palm Room in Ballard.


We stopped for beers and a light dinner at our new favorite bar, The Noble Fir.


We came across another mural by local artist Ryan Henry Ward -- you've seen his squid mural on my blog previously. There are 50+ murals by him on buildings across Ballard and Fremont.


We visited Card Kingdom, which is a huge card and board game store. Your inner nerd comes boiling to the surface immediately here. And your outer nerd loves it too. So many games and puzzles. We left with the game 7 Wonders and discovered another party game we plan to buy soon. There is a pub connected to the store, and they let you borrow games and take them over there to play for free.











Finally, we visited the Ballard Locks again from the southern side so that we would be guaranteed to make it to the fish ladder that we couldn't get to last time. The fish ladder allows spawning salmon to come in from Puget Sound and travel to Lake Washington, at which point they locate and travel up their native streams. The ladder consists of 21 chambered steps, called weirs, which allow the fish to swim upstream on a gradual incline. The sockeye salmon are traveling up the ladder now. It was really striking to see them up close. The last image above is of paddleboarders approaching the locks from the sound.

More photos from the day in my photostream. Tomorrow, the zoo!