We got to the Mariners game about four hours early, so we could have time to walk over to the Klondike Gold Rush National Park location in Seattle, which was located a few blocks from Safeco Field. The main reason I wanted to go was to add a National Park stamp to the blue section of the passport. Maybe, by the end of the trip I can end up with at least one stamp in each section.
The Klondike Gold Rush National Park is actually an international system of parks in Canada and the United States. The Seattle location is located in the historic Cadillac Hotel in the Pioneer Square neighborhood, where many of those that went in search of gold stocked up on supplies before heading to the Klondike. The Seattle location is simply a small two level exhibit that shows the main journey of five different people that went in search of gold in the Klondike Gold Rush including Nordstrom, who started a shoe store in Seattle after he came back from searching for gold and that store later evolved into the Nordstrom department store chain.
My favorite part was they had embossing stations as you journeyed the route the gold seekers went. This included one saying Seattle, one saying Yukon Territory, and one saying Alaska Territory.
It was a fun place to visit, although Mik did not even care to see anything and he just sat by a bench and played MLB on his PSP. He did at least try the interactive exhibit that you stand on a scale that then tells you your value in gold if you were worth your weight in gold. The scale is actually like a wheelchair roll on scale, so Mik could actually try it just like when he gets weighed in his chair at the doctor’s.
