I have a bucket list of seeing all the states. I’ve seen
most of the southern states through road trips as a kid, and I’d been to Oregon
and Utah as a kid too. The map above shows the states I’d been to- including Minnesota and New York and New Jersey,
but I’ve been making plans for trips to fill out the list, so I can finally see
them all. This trip was meant to cover the northern states west of the Great
Lakes This map shows the planned route: 

Sept 9, Thursday.

States seen: Washington (new)

We caught a 10a Alaska Airlines flight to Seattle. Landed at
1p and went to the Budget Car Rental stand to rent a Kia Soul, a car we are
interested in buying, so we could test drive one during our road trip. In the
rental building, housing 12 different rental companies, we were met with a line
of 70 people in front of us at the Budget station. An hour and half later, we
got our Kia rented and headed down to Puyallup, 

a suburb to the south of
Seattle to visit my aunt, uncle, cousins and 5 dogs and a cat. 

We went out to a
place called Crockett’s Public House for dinner, 

had a great time, and
afterward headed into downtown Seattle 

to our Hotel- The Charter, at Second and
Stewart. 

Really nice place with a view of the city and if you lean really hard
into the window, the Sound as well.