Wildlife Forensics in Action: Trips into History

Apologies for the absence but now I’m back…..

I recently spent some time in Seattle, Washington followed by Portland, Oregon. Both cities are fantastic and although known for their abundant rainfall, the time periods I spent there were gloriously sunny and hot, enough to get sun burnt in fact!

Space Needle

Seattle is famed for Frasier, Greys Anatomy and of course the movie Sleepless in Seattle. The very floating house that Tom Hanks lived in during the movie is today on sale for 2.5 billion dollars!! Perhaps the most well-known landmark of Seattle is the Space needle tower which was built for the 1962 World Fair. It stands 605 feet tall and was built to withstand 200mph winds and earthquakes up to 9.1 magnitude. A trip to the top is well worth it for the panoramic view which includes the Cascade and Olympic Mountains, the downtown Seattle skyline and the impressive Mount Rainier. Other well-known features of Seattle are the world famous fish throwing markets, the original Starbucks and Pioneer Place. It is also home to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Google (email and maps) and Adobe.

Elliot Bay, Downtown Seattle and Mount Rainier taken from
the top of the Space Needle

A boat tour took us from Lake Union through Salmon Bay to the Puget Sound where we were privy to a wealth of information and sights. The Wizard boat from the award winning Deadliest catch was sitting in the harbour ready to set sail. At dusk we docked in Elliot Bay marina and finished a super trip with a super supper of fresh seafood.

The Wizard from the Deadliest Catch

I stumbled upon a Winston Churchill quote in a brewery!

Portland was fun and steeped in history. In 1843 William Overton and Asa Lovejoy beached their canoe on the banks of the Willamette River and saw great potential for the timber-rich land. At that time Overton lacked the 25 cents needed to file a land claim and so he struck a bargain with Lovejoy to share his claim in return for a quarter. Overton became bored with the work involved of clearing and road building and so split town selling his half of the claim to Francis W. Pettygrove. Lovejoy and Pettygrove now had to decide on a name for the new township , however they each wanted to call it after their hometowns, Lovejoy was from Boston, while Pettygrove was from Portland, Maine. They decided to flip a coin, now known as the "Portland Penny," to settle the argument. Pettygrove won on two tosses out of three. Portland’s dark past includes characters such as Joseph "Bunco" Kelly, a hotelier notorious for kidnapping young men and selling them to ship captains. The unfortunate men would wake up the next day stranded at sea and forced to work for indefinite periods of time. By the turn of the century Portland had begun to change into a township with lumber mill jobs and wealth from providing goods to the California Gold Rush. Today Portland is an ecofriendly vibrant city of parks, outdoor artwork, coffee carts, microbreweries, bridges and bookstores. Portland is a real people town, whose blocks are half the size of those in other towns providing clear vistas for 5 blocks and limits on building size to allow clear views of the sky. All in all not a bad investment by William Overton…..and all for a quarter!

London Beefeater and me

Voodoo Donuts

I was wondering up Broadway on July 4th when I stumbled across a London Beefeater...what are the chances of that?!?! Portland is well known for its Voodoo donuts store, where one can buy all manner or quirky items from a voodoo doll to a 6x sized donut! Portland boasts the smallest park in the world, according to the Guinness Book of Records. Mill Ends was first granted this recognition in 1971. The park is a circle 2 ft (0.61 m) across, with a total area of 452 sq in (0.292 m2).