Who needs a map?

I got to see the Ballard Locks this weekend. Ballard is an area just to the north of downtown Seattle, and used to be its own town. About a hundred years ago it was made a part of Seattle, but the area kept the name. A running joke in the area is a bumper sticker that says "Free Ballard." Anyway, a couple people I had told I was moving to Seattle highly recommended the locks as something to check out, so I was pretty happy to discover that where we were.
The Locks are where boats enter and exit Lake Washington, and in reducing the structural stress is how the city keeps the bridges up. Lake Washington is higher than Puget Sound so the boats use the locks as a sort of elevator between the two bodies of water. There is also a pretty park that surrounds it and it includes a steep hillside my nephews would love to roll down.
After wandering around the locks for a bit and getting a great education about them we kept on walking. Eventually we stumbled across Discovery Park and I got to see yet another great view. My tour guide was fantastic. He pointed out that to the right were boats, to the left were some islands, and straight a head was a container ship. I was with a native of Seattle and we had no idea what the view was of. I just laughed. We wandered a bit more, and without really paying attention to where we were going we eventually made our way back home. All in all it was a great day.