2-11-01

I had arranged with Mike Baker and Dale Buzzell to meet me today at the Don Armeni boat ramp in West Seattle. This is the embarkation point for my trip up the Duwamish. Mike & Dale have volunteered to put this event on film. They will shoot digital video throughout the journey and will edit it, add sound, then burn a CD so I can have a permanent record. I was meeting them this time however just to go over the "story board" aspects of the trip, to give them an overall concept. We stopped several times along the Duwamish, mostly on bridges, all the way up to Fort Dent Park in Tukwila. The problems soon became obvious. The riverbank is steep with the river level about 20 feet below trail level and the whole bank covered in blackberry bushes. Not a haul-out site in sight! We proceeded further upstream to a point just south of freeway I-405 and east of West Valley highway, behind a Best Western Inn. At the bend in the river was a flat sandy area with a trail from the bike path down to the river. This would be the closest place to Easy Rider to get out of the river and on to the road for the journey back to Alki.