Words and photographs provided by Michael Casatico

Sometimes things don’t always go as planned, or maybe a better way to put it is sometimes things don’t really get planned at all. $49 dollars later (thank you SouthWest) and I’m sitting in the Seattle airport realizing that I never really mapped out any exact details of this trip. My roommate Kyle and I had purchased these plane tickets on a whim with the plan to travel around Washington state and stay with his family. The only things we knew were that we wanted to check out the city of Seattle, Olympic National Park, and somehow figure out a way to get across the water to the San Juan Islands. Now, granted Washington state is notoriously known for its constant rainy and overcast weather, we didn’t even consider that maybe visiting during the middle of January might be a bad idea. Now let me tell you, as soon as I stepped off the plane and got hit in the face with a chilling sub 30 degree gust of wind accompanied by some rain drops, all of these thoughts began to cross my mind. Our flights had gotten in pretty late so we gathered our bags and cruised over to where we were going to be staying.

The following day we woke up and drove into the city once again with no real plan of what we wanted to do, but we figured Pike’s Place Market would be a good place to start. I saw fish flying through the air, thousands of people walking around with Starbucks cups, and smelt the fresh smell of seafood everywhere we walked. I felt like a real tourist there for a second until we walked down a few side streets and ended up standing in front of this old brick building which happened to be the home of CloudBurst Brewery. Right away you got the feeling that this was a “locals only” type of spot. Coincidentally when we got inside we quickly realized something special was going on because the majority of people inside drinking beer all had different pajama jumpsuits on. Honestly, at first I was extremely confused and contemplated leaving because I didn’t get the memo on the dress code but I’m glad we stuck it out. Come to find out they were celebrating their one year anniversary and the jumpsuits were their way of showing up to a party. We grabbed a couple beers to support the cause and I was extremely impressed and happy we had stumbled upon this spot.

It was just funny to me because what were the odds we randomly showed up to their first birthday party uninvited? On top of that, the beer was amazing and the weather for the day was beautiful. There wasn’t a rain cloud in sight and the sun beamed pleasantly over the city. We continued our journey through the heart of the city and found some sick spots to photograph the skyscrapers and beautiful waterfront ports. Little did I know at the time, but this would go on to be the theme of the whole trip. No plan, perfect weather, complimented by insanely beautiful locations to explore that we would stumble upon day by day. Day one of the trip was a success and we hadn’t even gotten to Olympic National Park yet..

TO BE CONTINUED!!!