I’ve arrived in the more kind season of the city, the summer. Most of the days have been spectacular. Bright sun and enough hot to enjoy swimming outside and doing summer barbecues in the night. Except for the summer, water in Seattle has a special role, Seattle is one of the rainiest cities of the USA.
It rains 150 days/year, although the average annual rainfall is lower than much of the Eastern and Southern U.S., as well as portions of the Midwest. This rain keeps the city’s many trees and plants evergreen. That is the nickname of the state of Washington, where Seattle is located, The Evergreen State. But for talking about the rain and about the fifty different names that exist for describing each kind of rain I’ll write another post, an autumn-winter post probably
This time I want to talk about some things that have surprised me of this city and that I didn’t know. It’s the intrinsic relation of the water in Seattle but not from the rain!but from the lakes and bays.
Seattle has a peculiar geographic situation that makes it unique and especially nice. I think it is one of the cities with the most perimeter of the shore in proportion to its size. That makes the watter in Seattle an important issue.
Seattle is situated between Puget Sound, an inlet of the Pacific Ocean, in the West and Lake Washington in the East. It’s the irregularity of these boundaries that make this place one of a kind. In Seattle, you can enjoy a water view from nearly every point of the compass.
Water in Seattle make the views to Elliot Bay are of great beauty especially when the sunsets. It’s when for contrast, the sunlight which goes hiding reveals to you the very high Olympic mountains.
If you work in the closeby town Bellevue, you will have the great experience to drive across the longest floating bridge in the world every day. It’s a nice moment when you feel surrounded by water in the middle of Lake Washington.
But also, Seattle has much more water! Lake Union is another lake in the interior of the city. At night it is a spectacle of reflections and during the day it’s usually and nice to see sailboat regattas. Lake Union connects to the sea through the Lake Washington Ship Canal, where you will able to see spawning salmon at the beginning to the summer in Hiram M. Chittenden Locks.
The smaller and manmade in the North of the city is Green Lake. It’s a pretty nice full of life in the heart of the neighborhood with the same name. Runners, old people, kids… enjoy going around 5 km of Green Lake shoreline. During the summer it is the public pool of Seattle, and like in the other lakes you can also kayak, paddle board or jump trampolines.
In the South of the lake is Woodland Park and the Zoo, but for talking about Parks in the evergreen city I’ll need two or three post, maybe the next.
