Road Trip: Part Two

I seem to be mired in school and internship commitments. Today is the first time in a long while that I felt okay with sitting down to blog about my thoughts. How I long for that week in August when my mind was freer to enjoy the open road.

First though, I'll place some pictures from the drive through Oregon. It really was beautiful with the smoke clouding the sky, even though the smell was not as enjoyable.

SO, after wandering around Pike Place for most of the day, my friend and I managed to walk past a bar decorated with very colorful imagery. Since the name of the place was Unicorn, we spent a good five minutes trying to use our phones to figure out if it was a gay bar. It's totally not, but something even more awesome. What sealed the deal were two "hobos" outside the door: a scuffed-up Storm Trooper with a sign reading, "Teenagers blew up the Death Star, every little bit helps" as well as a bloodied Black Knight.

Inside was a neon and darklight carnival that we quickly guessed was set up for geeks in mind, as in the downstairs area there were no fewer than 10 pinball machines, and an adult-themed claw game with such things as dildos, condoms, hemorroid cream, and a giant stuffed unicorn. The upstairs area had a lot of stuffed animal heads and other things on the wall. Seriously, is this not awesome? The drinks menu was in keeping with the theme of "We are crazy, but also cool" as you can see in this picture:

The menu also had awesome things on it. I for instance, had a really nice quinoa salad thing, but as was becoming too much of a habit on this trip, I was neglecting to take any pictures. It also didn't help that everything was under dim lighting and my phone camera didn't have good flash. Coincidentally, we had wandered into Unicorn on a night where a cosplayer club was having an outing. I recall seeing Naruto, a couple of what might have been Pokemon, catwomen, and some sort of other ninja. It was quite fun, and definitely a place I'd love to go to if I lived in the city.

The next day we headed to Ballard to do touristy things. We drove through the neighborhood before going to one of the boat lock parks, and got to see one of them working. I took a couple videos of it, here and here. Then we drove past the Fremont Troll and waved at him before going to lunch at JhanJay Vegetarian Thai over in Wallingford. I certainly will miss how many nice vegetarian restaurants there are when I return to Nevada. Here's my Thai tea as I remembered I had a camera phone:

 

After some excellent spicy tofu, we wandered along the street and found a kid's toy shop where I got Sirenidi a rainbow puzzle toy. Then we went to Gasworks Park where my friend was ecstatic for the two hours we wandered around looking at the machinery and overgrown bushes of blackberries (she's really into industrial post-apocalyptic stuff). 

There was going to be more in this post, but once again I went too picture crazy. Until my next moment of free time!