Ballard, WA - My 1st and 4th day stops on my Seattle tour were to the always incredible, always awesome Archie McPhee store. I’ve been shopping their online store for years and and was a ball of nonstop excitement about visiting the real life place. It is the rubber chicken and bacon floss mecca of the world. I was in heaven.
When you first enter the store you’re assaulted by a sheer wall of crazy plastic bits hanging from the celling, tacked to the walls and in bins for your buying pleasure. They have a section of wallets, shelves bobble heads, a wall of Jesus’, wigs, masks, urine specimen kits. The place is a wonderland of junk, and yes it seduces you into buying it. I mean really, who doesn’t need a glow in the dark squid?
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Seattle, WA - All of the rumors about the Ye Olde Curiosity Shop are true. The place is spectacular. Having been around for the last 100-odd years and owned by the same family the place has a wondrous collection of everything from shrunken heads and two headed calfs to t-shirts and plastic beads. And that is why the “for sale” items are not nearly as fun as the “please don’t touch” items.
Primarily a store, the Ye Olde Curiosity Shop is located right on the water, Alaskan Way, on a corner next to a souvenir store and the pier. Strangely it’s nestled among some of the most mundane fast food seafood eateries and souvineir shops. Perhaps that’s why there were so many more people inside than I expected. Of course, if they were freaked out by the shrunken heads they didn’t show it.
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Hopwood, PA - I’ve been to Laurel Caverns loads of times in my former life a a Girl Scout, but it’s been a good 20 odd years since I’ve been there and it had yet to be viewed through my cynical eyes. So I jumped in the car for a quick drive up to the Laurel Highlands in order to revisit the only cave I’ve ever been in.
The first thing I noticed was that as a Girl Scout you don’t really get to enjoy the slightly out of the way scenery (Import Export Tire’s Muffler Man), or the cool sights you may see as you drive along Route 40 (Searights Toll House). Instead you stay on course until you get to your camping spot and then spend the evening building fires and singing songs about bears chasing you up Redwoods. This trip was much more informative. I also haven’t built a fire in 20 odd years…well unless you count the one’s I built in trash cans in college, thus proving that the camp fire badge was less than worth the effort.
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