Road Trip, Day 16 - Seattle & Everett (Tue 26 Nov)

Today Bren and I split up for the first time since we started with the road trip. She was keen to explore more of downtown Seattle and I was excited to get to a town called Everett, about 35km north of Seattle.

Unfortunately, by accident Brenda deleted most of her photos that she took in Seattle, but we did find some elsewhere in cyberspace:

 

Beechers handmade cheese

B seems to have been the first to visit here from Cape Town! ;-)

Colourful stuff luring the females of all species  . . .

Pike Place's famous fish market

 

Lovely!

Brenda's Holy Grail. Nuff said. 

 ***

Meanwhile.

Everett is home to Paine Field Airport. And Paine Field Airport is home to Boeing.

Needless to say I was itching to get there, and after negotiating Tuesday Seattle morning rush hour traffic, I arrived at the Future of Flight Aviation Center & Boeing Tour.

This facility was purpose built to promote the Boeing company and bascially consists of an auditorium, large exhibition hall, viewing deck, gift shop & cafeteria. From here one depart for a tour of the Boeing manufacturing facility, which also happens to be the world's largest building by volume. And on the 'hangar doors' are graphics of various Boeing models (787, & 777), which apparantly is also the world's largest digital graphic.

Unfortunately, one is not allowed to take any pictures on the tour, but suffice to say that I found the experience FASCINATING. Anyone with a slight interest in aviation or in operational management should go and see this if they get the chance. I won't bore you here with all kinds of stats, but it truly is a great thing to see and exerience. Read up on the web if you want to know more about it and what it takes to manufacture the 747, 767, 777 and 787 all under one roof!

While waiting for my tour to depart, I did manage to get some shots of Paine Field, and was lucky enough to see a few aircraft depart, among them the Dreamlifter.

Paine Field

As far as large commercial jets go, only its mother can love this aircraft, as it is not considered beautiful by any stretch of the imagination. However, it was purposefully built to provide cost and time efficient transport for the manufacturing of the 787 Dreamliner, which is manufactured across the globe and basically just assembled here in Everett.

 

Something seems wrong with that joint  . . .

and away she goes

 While still drooling over the sound left in my ears from the take off of the dreamlifter, a Singapore 777 rolled closer to say hi and bye:

Pure beauty

Those engines are the largest jet engines in the world!

The 777 is without a shadow of a doubt my favourite airliner. I was aware that its engines are the largest and most powerful in the world, but according to our tour guide, the fuselage of a 737 will fit through the outer engine rings of those engines!

Anyhow - I managed to pull myself away from Paine Field and met up with Brenda again in Seattle to catch up after another amazing day.