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RoadRunner: City Portrait: Seattle’s Coffee Culture
Written by: Robert Smith
RoadRunner Magazine   http://www.RoadRUNNER.travel
10/18/2008 - 01:22 PM
Seattle, WA
 
A short ride along 1st Avenue takes me to Pioneer Square, Seattle's symbolic birthplace. (Photo: Robert Smith) ยป More Photos

Text & Photography: Robert Smith

Two events herald my approach to Seattle from the north on Interstate 5. First, the ominous coalescence of scattered clouds quickens as I'm leaving the Olympic Mountains' rain shadow, proof that Seattle's soggy reputation is richly deserved. Second, the smattering of cars turns into a packed, four-lane steel stampede as I approach Everett, Seattle's northern outpost. Avoiding the evening rush hour, I turn west off I-5 into Lynnwood and check into the Rodeo Inn on 99. Among the amenities, the roaring from the Interstate provides an incessant aural backdrop.

In the middle of the last century, Seattle pondered a critical decision: Should Interstate 5 run through the city center?
Deciding in favor of an urban freeway has shaped the city's growth, spawning "Pugetropolis," a sprawl of communities along the I-5 corridor around Puget Sound including Everett, Tacoma, and Olympia. Already numbering three million people (more than half of Washington's population), futurists expect the corridor to extend 500 miles north to Whistler, BC, and south to Eugene, Oregon. But Seattle and its increasingly sclerotic artery, Interstate 5, will remain at Metro Cascadia's core.

Like most great seaports, Seattle has a superb natural harbor. Shielded by the Olympic Peninsula, Puget Sound forms a deep-water basin of islands, inlets, and promontories. Seattle sits on an isthmus between Puget Sound and Lake Washington.
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