We woke up to sub-freezig temperatures on Jean Lake this morning:

Before heading back into town, I had to massage and shake out the hose for the water bag in the bed of the truck so I could fill the RV:

We plan to come back to Jean Lake after spending Shabbos Chanukah in Las Vegas:

Good Shabbos from Las Vegas!

As we found out last night, Jean Lake is closed to public use this weekend.  Turns out the closure is for the Henderson 250, an offroad race that goes through this area.  Micha and I installed batteries in this new RV and tested most of the systems.  He then towed his RV back to Las Vegas:

We followed a few minutes behind and drove into Las Vegas.  Trish got ready for Shabbos and I got in a quick bike ride:

Once again we’re parking at my parents’ synagogue for Shabbos.  We really appreciate being allowed to park here!  We’re having my parents over for dinner so we installed our homemade table slide to give us extra seating:

Good Shabbos from Las Vegas!

When we were told that a member of the synagogue here in Seattle has a private collection of trophy animals from around the world, we had to go take a look.  I was not prepared for the quantity and diversity of specimens on display.  Amazingly, nearly all the animals on display were harvested by the owner of the collection:

This afternoon, we photographed belated bar mitzvah photographs for M:

Trish photographed B outside:

Of course this is M, so there were no shortage of goofy outtakes:

This is my “I’ve lost my patience” look:

Good times!

Tonight we ate at the local kosher Indian Restaurant.  The food was interesting.  I spilled a mug of spiced tea all over myself.  I hope no never go back there again.  Trish loved it!

We had a great Shabbos here in Seattle.  We met our new friends Chanan and Sarah, who it turns out are friends with our Las Vegas friends Micha and Tehilla, who in turn also know Kent and Bracha here in Seattle, whom we’ve known for 15 years of so.  Small world!

Saturday night there was a pretty bad storm, and the neighborhood lost power for 12 hours or so.  This was a big deal for folks living here, but for us it was a non-event since we weren’t plugged in anyway.  We are going to need to plug in or run the generator soon, as the constant cloud cover is reducing our solar panel harvest.

This morning, the sun came out for 30 minutes or so, and I was so excited I was jumping up and down in the RV.  A local told me that Seattle has the lowest average lumens of any major city in the US.  It gets a little depressing.

Late this morning we drove into downtown.  After driving around for a bit, we found a parking spot and walked over to the Space Needle:

The area has some interesting sculptures:

Getting nice photos with M is never easy, as he can’t just stand still:

Seattle has bike kiosks where for $8 a day one can rent one of these slightly more green than celeste bikes.  There’s even a closet at the end of the aisle that contains sanitized helmets for use with the bikes:

We walked down to the Olympic Sculpture Park to view what passes for art these days:

It started to rain pretty hard:

After a nice lunch at the Bamboo Garden, we again found a parking spot and walked down to the waterfront:

From there, we walked over to the Pike Place Market:

The famous gum wall, where thousands of tourists have left their chewing gum on the alley walls:

This fellow paints customer’s names by creating a Chinese art scene for each letter:

I love the cobblestone streets:

It was a long day with quite a bit of walking, and it confirmed that I still hate being in an urban setting.

The clouds cleared this morning so we were able to see the Cascades to the East from the Walmart parking lot:

B continues using her wall to work on her writing curriculum:

It’s easy to tell which room is a boy’s room:

After finishing homeschool, we drove South to overnight at the synagogue in Seattle, in the Seward Park neighborhood.  Good Shabbos from Seattle, Washington!  See the trip map for driving details.