We returned from Canada to Seattle on Independence Day, our nation’s 250th birthday. Knowing that Seattle traditionally had a big fireworks show on Lake Union, I had booked us a room at the Silver Cloud Hotel there with a view over the lake.

The Victoria Clipper V docked around 8 p.m. and we hauled our luggage towards the Bell Street Pier Garage. An Amtrak train pulled up and blocked us from crossing at Wall Street, so I led us back to Vine to get around it. We loaded into the rental car, and I drove 2.5 miles to the hotel, grateful for my Apple CarPlay and my TomTom GO app’s help in navigating the unfamiliar streets. At one point, we were driving under the old World’s Fair monorail that still connects a downtown shopping mall to Seattle Center. The only time I rode it was back in 2005.

The South Lake Union neighborhood is the global headquarters for Amazon, and its housing is mostly modern luxury mid-rise apartments and open-concept condominiums. A one-bedroom condo there costs about two or three times as much as our three-bedroom home on a quarter-acre lot in Bartlesville.

The streets near the lake were flanked by parallel-parked cars, with the lake full of boats awaiting the fireworks.

Our fifth floor suite had both a bedroom and a living room, the latter having a French door with railing providing a view of the lake beyond Fairview Avenue and the marinas. I was relieved that we could see the central barge the fireworks would be launched from.

It was a marvelous climax for our anniversary trip. Below is a view of the show from Gasworks Park across the lake from our hotel, on the other side of the barge.

I shot video during the first minutes of the fireworks, but then Wendy and I set aside our phones to just enjoy the show with each other.

The show looked pretty amazing up close, but was also quite impressive miles away in West Seattle.

The barge was often lost in smoke.

Here’s a final shot I found in a Seattle newspaper.

After the show ended, we enjoyed listening to the observers’ celebrations.

Fireworks Slideshow

Knowing we would be up late for the fireworks, I had kept us in the Lake Union hotel for two nights. Thankfully it offered a good free breakfast, as the area was not as walkable as Belltown. For lunch on Day 10, I drove us to the South Lake Union branch of the Cactus restaurant chain, parking for free in their building’s garage. For dinner, we just drove to a QFC grocery store for sandwiches. It offered free parking in its underground garage.

Seattle, unlike downtown Tulsa, is not a parking desert with oodles of surface lots. We used six different parking garages for our rental car during our stays there, even with us walking to Pike Place Market and Seattle Center.

While we had a marvelous Independence Day, that same night Bartlesville’s fireworks show was cancelled as it was hit with 80-mph winds that damaged many trees and buildings, blocked roads, and knocked out power and other services. Our home cameras were still working in its immediate aftermath, and we couldn’t see any major damage on them. Sparklight’s internet then went down for about a day, probably due to a power failure, while Meador Manor itself remained powered, as Arrowhead Acres has underground wiring.

We flew back to Tulsa on July 6, arriving home around 10 p.m. I spent several hours the next day, in sweltering heat and humidity, cleaning up some minor debris from trees in other yards that had blown in, trimming the greenery, mowing the lawn, and edging. It was a brutal reminder that we had left behind the mild weather of the Pacific Northwest.

I told Wendy during this vacation that I intended for it to be our last visit to Seattle or Victoria. While I do plan on us returning to the Pacific Northwest to escape some future Joklahoma summer, I expect that we will instead return to Oregon, avoiding Portland by flying into Eugene, North Bend, or Medford, with us renting a car to enjoy the public access along the coast. Meanwhile, I’m sure some future summer breaks will find us returning to the higher altitude and drier air of Santa Fe, New Mexico and southwest Colorado.

I was so used to summer breaks, until going into administration in 2017, that I don’t feel retired yet, and I expect my new reality won’t become fully apparent until Wendy goes back to work in about a month. It was fun to kick off my retirement, and celebrate a decade of marriage, in the cool and lovely Pacific Northwest.