Finally after leaving Portland and some slow traffic on the I5 Northbound we finally arrived in Seattle. The end of our trip.

It’s been a long trip but full of fun and full of great people that we got to meet. Seattle was no different. Even though we didn’t do much sightseeing and really, really just relaxed and prepared to leave the country we still had a blast even though we didn’t even couchsurf in Seattle. Instead, we got to stay with Wayne and Stacey (Wayne’s World, anyone?) for a couple of days. Wayne being the brother of Forrest, who we met in Chicago. How did we meet Forrest in Chicago? Because he’s a friend and former landlord of my brother when he briefly lived in Chicago and since I didn’t get to meet him when he was visiting Austria we met up in Chicago. Easy as that. Hope that wasn’t too confusing, read it again if it was. Anyways when we were in Chicago talking about our roadtrip we mentioned that we would eventually fly out of Seattle. Forrest said “do you already have a place to sleep in Seattle?” to which I replied “not yet, we’ll worry about that once we get closer to Seattle”, since we still had 2.5 months in front of us. “Hold on”, he said, getting his phone and calling his brother. Who didn’t pick up but got a voicemail the like of “hey it’s Forrest, I have these Austrian friends here and they are going to Seattle, can they stay at your place? Call me back” or something like that. Eventually, I got a message that Wayne was cool with hosting strangers just because his brother vouched for them. A little side note for my brother, if you’re reading this: I wouldn’t do the same with friends of yours. Just to be clear. Anyways, come June and we were approaching Portland I got hold of Wayne and surprisingly enough they still were up for hosting us. And it was a lot of fun and we can’t thank you guys enough for that great end of our trip!

Seattle itself was pretty cool, too. Even though – as said – we didn’t do much it’s definitely a city to get back to and explore some more. Or at least to get back and have some more of those beers!

One time we also went to the EMP museum to see an exhibit on Nirvana and the Seattle Music scene at the time that made Nirvana possible. Pretty cool to see and there were even some other nice exhibitions going on, like Jimmy Hendrix or Battlestar Galactica (since the Science Fiction Museum is part of the EMP admission).

What was also really cool is the amount of music instruments they have available, including rooms to jam and so on, all with introductions so you can try playing the guitar, piano, drums and even the WAH-WAH pedals! Or you could learn how to scratch!

Eventually, we drove to the airport and since we could return the car empty we tried just that. I aged a few years just because I thought we wouldn’t make it. I’m curious how much gas there was left in the car..

This is the route from the last 3 months:

Thanks again to National Car Rental for helping out when we needed it and for making the whole rental experience as smooth as it was. Especially the people from the Houston Oaktree and Las Vegas offices!

In total we drove some 20.000 kilometers if not more, I will have to calculate that later because if I were to believe the rental agency it was easily 26.000 kilometers but I’m not quite convinced.

Impressive even for me, looking back now where we’ve been I’m a little speachless but I will make a follow up post on that once I am back to Austria, for now this will have to do! See you!