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In September of 2019 my sister and I embarked on an adventure to Washington State, if you don’t know, I live in New Jersey.
We established in January 2019 we were officially going and I began researching. Yes, I love to research and plan.
For our trip, we went for about 9 days. Of those 9 days, 2.5 were in Seattle then out to the Olympic National Park and Canada! Here’s a quick overview of where we stayed:
Night 1: Seattle
Night 2 & 3: Crescent Lodge
Night 4: Log Cabin Resort
Night 5 & 6: Lake Quinault
Night 7: Seattle
Night 8: Airplane - midnight flight
For tracking all the places we would be sleeping and activities per location, a spreadsheet was necessary! We were constantly checking the dates to make sure we were going to the right location for our stay, also the activities we had planned.
As you can see, we included a break down of the weather. The weather might not make sense at first to have a line for itself. However, this helped us have an idea of what weather conditions and temperature to pack for. Could you imagine having to constantly check the weather when packing for different days?
The weather we waited to add till a few days before leaving so it would be closely aligned to when we left. You don’t want to have the weather from a month or even a week before the trip. As you know, the weather is constantly changing.
Plus, who else is a procrastinator for packing? I wait till the night before and have sometimes done the day of.
I've gotten ALOT better!
Anyone else also a repeat packer? As in, you pack, take everything out and see what you can leave behind and then pack what is left? I've gotten in this habit simply because I'm an over-packer. I need to be sure everything can fit.
From there, I see what is a duplicate and remove it.
Now, back to the spreadsheet.
Location, this was so important for this trip. It helped keep days straight, and to remind us where we were staying.
If you have a multi-day trip or potentially a trip lasting months, include the day of the week and the date. If you just see Monday, it’s easy to not remember which Monday is which. Needless to say, save yourself the headache of putting the date and day of the week.
Activities included options of what we were set on doing and anything that had a cost attributed to it. Including the cost in the spreadsheet allow us to budget for the trip. It’s the worst when you plan a trip and pay for the flight and hotels, but then completely forget to put money aside for at least one or two activities.
Now that you understand the spreadsheet we used, go ahead and used it to organize your next trip!
Right, so I told you what we did, I’m sure you’re like okay, but what did you do in Seattle?
Seattle, we put little time into planning. We figured we would be a typical tourist and see the sites. Which for us, we wanted to see the Public Market and Space Needle. Which as soon as we got our rental car, we did just that, headed right to Public Market since it was on the way to the hotel and we needed to kill time before we could check-in.
After Public Market, which honestly was cool to see the sign, but Seattle has so much more to offer and that’s not a tourist trap where you’re likely to be robbed.
No joke, it’s so crowded I’m amazed my sister and I weren’t robbed.
From there we checked into our hotel and went next door for food.
Thank goodness for our server! A friendly reminder to ALWAYS be kind to the people bringing you, your food. You never know how they will bless you.
Emmy, our server wrote this list out for us, without us even asking! It was amazing! We told her it was our first time in Seattle and we had a very short time to see it.
In our spreadsheet, it had none of the locations from Emmy's list. We actually just went with her list because we stopped at Gasworks after eating and loved the view it gave the city.
That solidified for us, this list was legit and we need to go to all the spots on the “Emmy” list. Before going on a trip, check with friends who have gone or know someone going to where you're planning.
I researched, but sometimes you just get the generic tourist spots for an area.
Also, don't fill up your days. Leave time for rest. In my spreadsheet, it might look like a lot of activities, but some we did not do. We also left in a few as potential options for the day.
Don't get me wrong, we had about 16-hour long days, filled with activities but we slept each night. We wanted to see, hike, and explore as much as possible, and boy did we!
I hope this blog helped you think of new ways to plan for a trip, get organized, and plan a trip to Seattle. I cannot wait to return… someday!
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