Just plane fun...

Trip Start Aug 13, 2010

Trip End Oct 14, 2010

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Flag of United States Everett, Washington
Wednesday, September 1, 2010

Day 2 – Although we were trying to use the car as little as possible in Seattle, we made an exception to drive up to Everett, WA for a tour of the Boeing factory where they manufacture 747s, 777s, and the new 787s. The factory is enormous – over 472 million cubic feet – making it the world's largest building by volume. To put this in perspective, the building could host 800 simultaneous hockey games. (How boring! But the Canadians on our tour would have liked that.) Over 30,000 employees work at this facility, and shift changes are staggered every 6 minutes to avoid traffic jams out of the plant. We were able to see these airplanes in various stages of assembly and testing, including the attachment of the wings and engines, painting of the aircraft exterior, and installation of the seats. After seeing how a plane is made, Rachel thinks she will be marginally less nervous the next time she flies. We don’t have any photos of the planes we saw on the tour because Boeing strictly prohibits any cameras on its tour; in fact, we weren’t allowed to take any personal items on the tour, except for our wallets

Newly-minted airplanes at the Boeing factory

. After the tour, we visited a mini-museum that highlighted the history and future of flight and allowed us to design our own airplanes. The highlight, though, was our participation in a Boeing consumer research study. Boeing conducts consumer research on everything from cabin lighting to airplane features like overhead compartment and leg room. After the tour, some Boeing employees asked us if we’d like to participate. Our study focused on cabin noise, and we used remote controls in a mock airplane cabin to indicate how annoying we found various types and levels of cabin noise. Rachel gave low marks to anything that sounded like a mechanical problem.

We ate lunch at Dick’s Drive-in, a local chain that offers tasty cheeseburgers for dirt cheap prices. From there, we drove back to Seattle to visit the neighborhoods of Ballard and Fremont. Both of these areas (particularly Fremont) used to be very hippy-ish, but in recent years, have gentrified, with real estate prices escalating and luxury condos becoming more prevalent. While there, we visited the Ballard Locks and fish ladder. Because Lake Washington is significantly higher than Puget Sound, the city constructed a fish ladder in the 1920s that helps salmon and other migratory fish return to their spawning grounds in the tributaries to Lake Washington. We then walked over to Capitol Hill, where we visited the Elliott Bay Book Company, Seattle’s largest bookstore. Rachel fell in love with this bookstore, and also liked that pets were welcome. She was able to play with a husky while browsing the mystery section. While we (or Rachel, anyway) wish we could have spend more time here, we had dinner reservations at Coastal Kitchen, a restaurant in Capitol Hill. This place was hopping, and we immensely enjoyed our ahi tuna (Todd) and rockfish in coconut sauce (Rachel). The key lime pie for dessert also was delicious. We again successfully navigated the Seattle public transit system and took the bus back to our hotel.

Everett hotels Slideshow