Starbucks Headquarters (On the INSIDE!)

 Starbucks HQ!

Looking through my phone, I found these photos from August 2019 when Onions and I were invited to the Starbucks Headquarters in Seattle.

Not a really big deal, just another corporate headquarters for a Seattle based company.  Here with the original logo.

BUT, when you get invited by high school friend Heidi who has worked for the company for many years in the communications department and you get a badge that opens up the elevator to the upper floors, then, yes, it's time to go see the belly of the beast!

Still in the lobby, this wall shows a timeline of the the number of Starbucks that are opened in a year (above) and major world events (below).

Our badges!!!

Now we are upstairs, I don't think I'm supposed to be taking photos, but I snuck a couple.  Here's the area where they do interior design for the store.

The ubiquitous office break room.  Of course there is Starbucks coffee served.

A roasting machine. I guess that makes sense.

Here in a common space on one of the upper floors, they are packing beans for some kind of promotion.  

Right in the middle of HQ is a tasting room.

Heidi's desk in Corporate Communications.  Her desk is a mere 50 feet from Howard's.  Yes, that Howard.

The view into downtown Seattle from the corporate conference room (9th floor!)

After our tour, down to the Starbucks public cafeteria.

The food?  Italian based of course.  Here Heidi is showing her Starbucks ID!

I had to take this photo to show and document that the front of house staff was all young and white but the behind the counter staff was predominantly POC.

LUNCH!  Thanks for a great tour, Heidi.

Tahoe Thanksgiving 2019

After so many trips to Seattle in the summer and fall, Mom said that we could pass on another trip to Seattle for Thanksgiving.  Onions decided that a trip to Tahoe was in order.  Even though there was lots of snow in the mountains, Onions thought it would be "an adventure" to purchase some chains and install them on the road.  As always, he was a master and it took less than 15 minutes.

Onions found us a very nice suite at a ski resort.  It had the WEIRDEST layout ever.  You walk in and there was a living room with television and sofa.  But then you had to walk THROUGH the bathroom with a hottub that opened both to the living room and bedroom in the rear.  Unfortunately no pictures were taken, so I post this photo of a wonderfully clear Tahoe.

We aren't snow people, so instead of skiing on the mountains, we decided to take a boat ride to see the mountains from the water!

Alas, as we were sailing along, the clouds came in so good-bye blue skies.

Emerald Bay and Fannette Island (I didn't know the name of the island but Google told me)

Thanksgiving Dinner?  Casino Buffet of course!  Here we are on the top floor of Harrah's in South Lake.  We lucked out to get a window table and got to watch the snow fall as we ate.

Onions didn't even touch the carving table.  It was all king crab legs for him!

We spent most of the weekend just driving around (and once accidentally ending up in Carson City, NV when we took a wrong turn) enjoying the parks and views.

On the Saturday of Thanksgiving weekend, we braved the snowy passes again and returned back to San Francisco.

Japanese Tea Garden at the UW Arboretum

Originally, Dad's celebration of life was scheduled for late October 2019 and Onions and I had already purchased plane tickets (they were incredibly cheap) so we had another weekend in Seattle.

Mom wanted to go to the Japanese Tea Garden at the Arboretum and it was here that Onions and I saw the colored leaves we were looking for a few weeks back!

And we met up with the gang for a dinner at Red Robin.  The boys are growing up FAST!

Fall Camping 2019

The catch-up posts continue!  Back in September 2019, I was riding home on the bus with a colleague and he mentioned that he had secured a campsite reservation but was unable to use it.  Onions and I jumped at the chance to go camping the weekend after Dad's celebration.  Our destination was Hendy Woods State Park a couple hours north of San Francisco.

Clearly, my husband is the adult in the relationship!

We spent some time on the coast in the town of Fort Bragg.

The quick one night excursion ended with a long drive along Highway 1 with many stops along the way to enjoy the views.

A highlight was hanging out at Point Arenas and the lighthouse.  Turns out there are some old lighthouse keeper cabins that have been preserved and updated for rent.  Something to keep in mind for the future.

Going two for two, the following weekend, Onions, having seen an Instagram post about the fall leaves, decided a trip to the Sierra was in order.  We ended up at the Calaveras Big Trees State Park and snagged a "first come first served" campsite.

The view of the meadow from our campsite.  No pictures of the colored leaves as, although we saw some, we were probably a week or two early.

We always eat well, and that butane stove is the best camping related item we have purchased.

We decided to head east on Highway 4 into the Sierra and we ended up in a town called Markleeville.

The state runs a hot springs called Grover Hot Springs.  It was decent, the wild hot springs we go to in the Owens Valley are better.

The view wasn't bad though.

But the weekend was all about spending time in the "Big Trees"