Our last Barn Tour was in April of 2019…roughly 916 days ago. A lot has changed since then. Adam started University, the US got a new President, and Seattle got a new arena and a new hockey franchise. Oh yeah, our lives were also turned upside down by the worst pandemic in the history of North America.
Thankfully, the Covid-19 pandemic had begun to get under control by the time the Seattle Kraken were scheduled to play their first home game so Adam and I made our plans and got ready to head west.
Wednesday, October 20, 2021
It was a bit strange heading to the airport. We had our negative Rapid Antigen Covid Test results in hand but had heard lots of horror stories about crazy long line-ups and delays at the airport. That, coupled with the fact that Adam had to write an online exam, had us arriving at the airport almost 7 hours before our flight…gotta be a new record!
Strangely enough, when we entered Pearson Airport we were shocked and confused to find it virtually empty. When we talked to the security guards we were told that earlier in the day it was a madhouse with 2 – 3 hour delays and a bunch of frustrated travellers. We just happened to hit the sweet spot in-between rush hours.
We made it through all the stages in record time and found a lounge where we could hole up for the next few hours. Again, we were lucky that we were in-between rushes and were able to get Adam a secluded cubicle where he could write his exam. Still, it was pretty funny to see him trying to concentrate while people walked around carrying drinks and food.
It all worked out well though as he finished the exam with a 90% and we made it to our plane on time for the 5 1/2 hour flight across the country to Seattle. Once arriving in Seattle we took a cab to our hotel and checked in.
On route! 
Our home for the next few days. 
Before – the view out of our window 
After – the blind was decorated to look like a forest
Thursday, October 21, 2021
This looked to be our best weather day of the trip so we decided to take advantage and do some tourist stuff. After a hearty breakfast of course!
Our first stop was the Seattle Space Needle…the number one tourist destination in Seattle. It was completed in 1961 just in time for the Worlds Fair. It is roughly 600 ft high and at the time was the tallest building west of the Mississippi. As a comparison, the CN Tower is 3 times as high at just over 1800 ft. The Space Needle gives you a great 360-degree view of the Seattle area and also has a moving glass floor and rotating restaurant.
Buying a sticker for the guitar case. 
Looking over the city. 
Standing on the glass floor. 
Looks like we are daredevils. 
Green screens are fun! 
Good shot of the tower and fountain outside.
The next stop was the Climate Pledge Arena, home of the NHL’s 32nd franchise, the Seattle Kraken. The arena is located in the same big park-like area as the Space Needle known as the Seattle City Center. It is basically about 72 acres and was the site of the Worlds Fair back in 1962.
We walked around the outside of the arena and were very surprised at how much work was still being done considering there was a Coldplay concert scheduled for the next night and then the Kraken’s opening game the night after.
Once we had toured the outside of the building, we decided to walk down to the waterfront and then head towards the downtown for our next stop, the world-famous Pike Place Market. We had heard great things and it had shown up in pretty much every “Things to do in Seattle” search so it was a must-see for us.
Cool sign for the Pike Place Market 
The gum wall….yes, that is pieces of chewed gum stuck to the wall. 
Great murals were painted throughout the market. 
The first ever Starbucks location. 
Inside the first Starbucks
After a great afternoon touring the Pike Place Market, we decided to head to the Crab Pot, a restaurant that came highly recommended by our friend Rich who had been there a few years ago. The highlight was a tub of seafood that basically gets dumped on your table. You are given a little hammer, a tiny fork, a bib and a bunch of napkins…Game On!!
Getting ready to eat. 
Outside the Crab Pot. 
Yes, that is a pile of seafood dumped on our table!
Once we finished up at the Crab Pot (the meal was exactly as advertised) we headed back to the hotel to do some homework and call it a night.
Friday, October 22, 2021
Over the course of the Barn Tour we have had a few days that started out looking one way and ended up being totally different. These have turned out to be some of the most memorable.
This Friday was one of those days. We originally were going to have a relaxed morning with Adam doing some homework and me catching up on some work and then maybe going for a drive.
Instead, after getting up at 5:30 am so Adam could write an online test at 6:30 am, we ended up getting passes to a trade show that was in town and got our Covid tests to allow us back in Canada.
The trade show was called Venues and was basically all about arenas. The fun part was there was a session at 11:00 am that was called “Releasing the Kraken” and featured some big names talking about how the franchise got launched. We attended that one and were surprised to see Gary Bettman, Commissioner of the NHL was an unannounced participant. Bettman along with some of the Kraken owners and general bigwigs (our favourite being Jerry Bruckheimer, producer of many movies including one of the best ever…Top Gun) had a lively discussion about how the franchise got launched and some of the cool features of the building. We were surprised to find out the ice is actually made from collected rainwater and then wondered why every rink doesn’t do it that way!
After the session was over we had a nice (complimentary) lunch and then headed over to the Climate Pledge Arena for our behind-the-scenes tour. It was amazing! The arena was built on the same location as a previous arena and they kept the roof. Basically, they propped the roof up, removed all the walls and then dug a really big hole under the roof. Then they built the new arena in the same spot with the majority of the building being underground. It is an engineering marvel and is also the first Net Zero Carbon arena in the world.
Most of the arena is underground. 
Over 28000 LED bulbs in this display. 
Screens everywhere. 
One of the corporate boxes. 
This bonzai tree is 14 years old. 
This is called the Space Needle lounge…can you guess why? 
Coldplay was setting up for a show that night. 
Living plant wall. There is a sign that says you shouldn’t eat them 
Amazon One store. No staff or checkouts. Entry is via your palmprint. 
The team store is called The Lair.
Once we were done the behind-the-scenes tour we hopped in the rental car that we had picked up earlier that day and started driving south down Interstate 5. The weather was overcast with scattered showers but our plan had two goals. First, we wanted to see Mount St Helens as it is famous for being the site of the deadliest volcanic event in US history. It erupted on May 18, 1980, and killed 57 people. And second, we wanted to get to the state of Oregon as it was one of the states Adam hadn’t been to yet.
There was a bunch of traffic as to be expected on a Friday afternoon and as we got closer to our turn-off for Mount St Helens the weather started to clear up a bit so we made the decision to give it a try.
Unfortunately, the weather wasn’t our friend and when we got to the Mount St Helens viewpoint it was a little overcast…
Mount St Helens is right behind Adam…really!
The trip wasn’t a total waste though as we saw some amazing scenery including this very cool bridge that was just on the outskirts of the Mount St Helens eruption zone.
Very cool bridge on the edge of the Mount St Helens blast zone.
We drove about an hour further and made it into Oregon so Adam got to step foot in his 41st state. We followed our pattern of trying to eat from places that we don’t have in Canada so we ate our Jack in the Box dinner in a parking lot in Oregon and headed back to Seattle tired but happy. It was a long crazy day but…sometimes you just got to roll with it!
Saturday, October 23, 2021
GAME DAY!!! It’s always exciting when you wake up and realize the game you travelled across the country to see is happening later that day.
Due to the craziness of the previous day, we spent a calm morning with Adam going to the hotel gym and working on a bunch of homework. The only wrinkle in that plan was we hadn’t heard back from our free Covid tests so decided to go get another set of tests done that cost money but provided results quickly.
Covid test shack.
One of the great things about having a family member who plays professional hockey is that sometimes he knows guys who are playing on the teams we are going to see and we get a chance to meet them or are given stuff by some of them. In this case, David knows Yanni Gourde and Jarrod McCann who both play for the Kraken. He texted them and let them know we would be in town for the game and asked if they could do something for us. They decided that it would work to have one or both of them flick us a puck in warm-ups. The challenge was they would have no way of knowing who we were so we decided to make a sign. Then it was up to us to get into position so they could see the sign and be able to flick us a puck…more on that later.
We then got “Game Ready” and headed back to the Pike Street Market area of Seattle to meet up with my cousin Tricia and her husband Patrick. We met them at the Pike Brewing Company (also known as the Pike Pub) and had a great time getting caught up while enjoying a tasty lunch and some of the locally brewed beer.
Enjoying all the Pike Pub has to offer with some great people!
After our lunch was over Patrick and Tricia pointed us in the direction of the Seattle Center Monorail, our choice on how to get up to the Climate Pledge Arena for the game. It is an interesting transportation option as it only has two stops, one downtown and one at the Seattle City Center (home of the Space Needle, Climate Pledge Arena etc). It is less than a mile long and was built for the 1962 World’s Fair as a way to get people back and forth from downtown Seattle to the Fairgrounds. It worked very well, carrying over 7 million passengers back and forth. The cars in use today are the same ones from 1962.
Today it was about 99% full of Kraken fans. The city had offered a free ride if you had a paid ticket to the Kraken home opener. It was only a two-minute trip but lots of fun as the atmosphere was starting to get electric.
The downtown stop is located in the Westlake Shopping Center. 
Getting pumped!
Once we arrived at the Climate Pledge Arena we were amazed at how many Kraken fans were fully decked out in Kraken gear considering they hadn’t even had a home game yet!
Lots of excited Kraken fans. 
Getting ready to go in.
Once we got through the security and Covid vaccination status checks we headed to our seats. We ended up with seats on the glass in the Kraken end and had quite an adventure getting there as it turns out they were in a special section and blocked off from the rest of the seats so we ended up getting an usher to show us to an elevator that took us down to the 4th level. Once there we were escorted through the “normally off-limits to the general public” areas of the arena. We saw the Kraken dressing room and a bunch of the luxury lounge areas. Then we turned a corner and some of the team was playing soccer as a warm-up in the hallway!
Soccer warm-up
Cool tunnel leading to Kraken dressing room.
We got to our seats and were surprised to see that every seat in the arena had a commemorative skate towel as a gift for the inaugural game…very nice of the Kraken!
Tate Boys at Rink #31
We hung around our seats for a while just taking in how cool the new arena really was…the scoreboards were the best we have ever seen. They had display panels on all three sides and there were two huge scoreboards in the arena so it pretty much gave all seats a great view of the action.
Checking out the action 
The two scoreboards.
Soon the players hit the ice for the pre-game warm-up and we got our sign ready to see if our plan would work and either Yanni Gourde or Jarred McCann would get us a puck.
Krakens first home pre-game skate. 
Holding up the sign.
And…it worked!! It worked really well as both Gourde and McCann were nice enough to toss a puck over the glass so we ended up with two very limited edition, actually used in the warm-up pucks.
Thanks guys! 
Close up of the official puck.
We settled in to enjoy a great game. The atmosphere was electric with a full house of fans eager to embrace their Kraken. There were a few celebrities in attendance including Ann Wilson from Heart singing the national anthem, Russel Wilson and DJ Metcalf from the Seattle Seahawks, rapper Macklemore and basketball legend Gary Peyton. Both Peyton and Metcalf were within 10 seats of us.
And now it was time for the puck drop. The crowd was crazy…tons of energy. Particularly when the opening goal was scored by a Kraken defenseman! The Kraken actually went up 2 – 1 at one point but then ended up losing the game 4 -2.
Game action.
After the game, we collected a few extra souvenir towels to bring home (seems like rich people and sports celebrities aren’t as excited about skate towels as we are and there were a few left behind). Then we headed back to our hotel for an early bedtime as we had an 8:00 am flight so set the alarm for 5:30 am and hit the sack.
Sunday, October 25, 2021
Seattle Airport was great and we made our flight with time to spare.
It was another jam-packed trip so you don’t have a bunch of time to think about what you have done…you just keep going. Once on the plane though you have a chance to reflect on what a great trip it had been. Except for Adam…he was doing homework!!
Learning on the plane.
We arrived back at Pearson on time and Mary met us at the airport. Then it was a short drive back home to Burlington, a quick dinner and then Adam headed back to Queens to study for another test the next morning. A great trip that once again ended up with lots of stories and most importantly…memories!
