Friday · Underground to Upper Deck
Drive straight into Seattle — I-90 ends downtown. Park once and walk everything; the train brings you back to the car after the game.
This is the hard number of the day — a 2:00 PM tour works back to a 7:30 departure with roughly half an hour of slack. 8:00 is the absolute latest and spends all of it.
~11:15 AM: lunch in Ellensburg, then Snoqualmie Pass and the long drop into the valley. Stay on I-90 to the end.
Leave the car here until the game is over.
Worth pricing on arrival: everything today is in Pioneer Square, so a lot down there would cut the 16-minute walk each way and mean no train at all. Pike Place is the known quantity — verified rates, open till 2 AM, and Link brings you back to it after the game.
Check in for the tour at 614 1st Ave.
Holiday Friday — do not walk up. Book online →
After the 1889 fire the city rebuilt its streets a full story higher and sealed the original storefronts and sidewalks underneath. What you walk is the actual ground floor of the old city, about fourteen feet below the one you arrived on.
Out of the underground with 45 minutes and one block. Coffee on Occidental Avenue’s pedestrian stretch, or just wander the square.
Covers the exhibits, the elevators, the lobby, and the 35th-floor observatory. Runs hourly. General admission included — stay up top afterward. The deck is open-air with the original wrought-iron railings.
When it opened in 1914 this was the tallest building on the West Coast — it held that for nearly fifty years, until the Space Needle. 462 feet to the roof. You go fourteen feet under the sidewalk and then 35 floors up, within one block and two hours of each other.
Washington residents get a local rate well below the $18–25 general price. Bring your ID. Reserve a time →
The easy call — and it will be filling with jerseys.
First Avenue south, all the way.
It cools fast after sunset. Know before you go →
Stadium Station is one block east of the park. Ride northbound two stops to Westlake. Trains every 12–16 minutes after 10 PM; service ends around midnight. Then a five-minute walk to the garage.
Goodnight, Seattle.
💸 Cheaper Friday parking option
Park free at Angle Lake Station and ride Link in (~32 min). Costs about fifty minutes of driving and the free afternoon downtown. Do not use Tukwila Int’l Blvd — reduced capacity through Oct 1.
Saturday · Market, Island, Wheel
Market in the morning, island in the afternoon, ferris wheel at sunset. Eat dinner on Bainbridge — it’s better food, and the later boat back is what puts you on the wheel at the right hour.
Enter before 9 AM and exit by 9 PM and the whole day is $17 instead of $36.
Produce and flower stalls setting up, fishmongers actually working, and you can walk the Main Arcade without shuffling. Don’t skip the lower levels underneath it.
Directly below the market beside the Market Theatre box office.
Lunch is happening on the island.
🛍 Plan B — Aritzia instead of Bainbridge
Backup for the afternoon if the island doesn’t happen (weather, energy, ferry lines). Seattle’s Aritzia is at University Village — 2685 NE University Village St, open Sat 10 AM–9 PM — an open-air mall with free parking, about 15 minutes north of downtown. Sephora, Anthropologie, lululemon and a Din Tai Fung are in the same complex, so lunch upgrades itself.
How it slots in: keep the whole morning as planned. Around 1:30, get the car from the garage (leaving early still counts as “out by 9” for the $17 rate) and drive up. Two ways to keep the Great Wheel:
• Cleanest: ride the wheel at ~1:00 before you leave downtown, shop the afternoon away, then drive straight to Tukwila from the mall — no re-parking downtown.
• Sunset purist: shop until ~6:15, drive back to the waterfront (~$10–15 evening lot near Pier 57, or re-enter the Pike Place garage), and ride at 7:20 as scheduled.
Skipping the ferry saves $11.35 each — a number Aritzia will not leave intact.
It goes first because 4 PM is a real closing time and the fish shop is not.
A few blocks back toward the ferry. An early dinner here is better than anything you would queue for on the Seattle waterfront at seven.
Winslow’s main street runs between all of this — browse it on the way back down to the dock.
If you want more slack, the 5:35 gets you in at 6:10 — but the later boat is what puts you on the wheel at sunset.
Eight minutes north of the dock. Twelve minutes, three revolutions, 175 feet up and cantilevered forty feet out over the water. You are riding straight into the sunset.
Exit before 9 PM — that deadline is what keeps the whole day at $17 instead of $36.
The Great Wheel closes at 9 and the garage rate expires at 9, so the evening has one shape and it fits. Do not linger past 8:30.
Sunday · The Mountain
Check-out is a deadline, not a schedule. Leave at six and Paradise is entirely doable — then drive home east over Chinook Pass instead of backtracking. Labor Day Monday is your recovery day.
🔥 Check before you commit, Sunday morning
The Grand Park 2 Fire has been burning northeast of Rainier since August. As of Sept 3 your entire route is open — Nisqually to Paradise, Stevens Canyon, Cayuse and Chinook — with only Sunrise Road closed. Check the park road status and the smoke forecast before you leave.
Nothing is open on the way and you don’t want the stop.
South through Eatonville to Elbe, then WA-706 east through Ashford.
⛽ Gas up in Eatonville or Elbe. There is no fuel in the park, and once you exit east there is essentially nothing until Naches — roughly 120 miles of mountain road. Cell service dies around Ashford and does not return until the east side — download the offline map before you leave.
The timed-entry pilot was cancelled — just drive up. Fees →
This is the whole reason for the early alarm: on a holiday weekend the lots fill mid-morning, and the Park Service’s own advice is to arrive before 7 AM or after 4 PM. At 8:45 you will get a spot, possibly in the lower lot.
Tops out near 6,800 feet at Panorama Point. Meadows, the Nisqually Glacier head-on, and marmots that have stopped caring about people. Clockwise puts the views up front.
Shorter versions from the same lot: Myrtle Falls (0.8 mi, paved) · Glacier Vista (~2.5 mi, 800 ft) · Panorama Point out-and-back (~4 mi, 1,400 ft).
Early September is past peak wildflower but the meadows are turning, crowds thin above the first mile, and there may be lingering snow up top. Layers, real shoes, two liters of water each.
Stop at Reflection Lakes — it is the postcard, mountain-in-the-water shot and costs you five minutes. Skip Grove of the Patriarchs; the trail has been closed since flood damage took out its bridge in 2021.
The whole mountain behind the lake. Then east on WA-410 down the Naches valley.
An hour faster than backtracking to I-5 and around through Seattle, and immeasurably better looking.
⚖️ One conflict to know about
If Friday’s drive ran long and you lost the Underground Tour, you cannot also do Paradise. A 9:00 AM Sunday departure puts you on the road at 10:30 — too late for the mountain. Pick one.
Extras · Plans B, Prep & Pennies
Lighter Sunday options, the book-tonight list, and where the money goes.
If Paradise is too much
Lighter Sunday options — all route from wherever you are.
The same mountain for half the effort and none of the parking fight. I-5 south to WA-18, WA-164 through Enumclaw, then WA-410 to the summit. Park at Tipsoo Lake and walk the loop clockwise so Rainier faces you the back half. High point 5,850.
Thirty minutes east of Seattle, directly off I-90 — genuinely zero detour on the way home. Open sunrise to sunset ($7/hr in the paid lot). The upper viewing platform is 200 feet from the parking and wheelchair accessible.
A big rock ledge over Rattlesnake Lake and the valley, near North Bend. Busy on a holiday weekend — go early. Also zero detour.
Staying in the city instead? Discovery Park in Magnolia is 534 acres with a bluff trail over Puget Sound and a lighthouse; the Washington Park Arboretum near UW is free and right by the I-90 on-ramp.
Book or do tonight
Where the money goes
Beyond lodging and game tickets.
Per adult
| Link light rail, round trips | $6 |
| Smith Tower (WA resident rate) | ~$10 |
| Underground Tour | ~$25 |
| Bainbridge ferry | $11.35 |
| Great Wheel | ~$20 |
| Bainbridge museum · Pike Place · Gum Wall | free |
| About | $72 |
Per car
| Friday garage (evening) | $36 |
| Saturday garage (early bird) | $17 |
| Mount Rainier entrance (7 days) | $30 |
| Fuel | $70–85 |
| About | $155–170 |
Addresses & reservations
- Airbnb4821 S 136th St, Tukwila, WA 98168
- Pike Place Market Garage1531 Western Ave (also 1901 Western Ave, 1530 Alaskan Way)
- Pike Place Market85 Pike St
- Underground Tour614 1st Ave · reservation required
- Smith Tower506 2nd Ave · Talking Tour, hourly
- T-Mobile Park1250 1st Ave S
- Colman Dock (ferry)Pier 52, 801 Alaskan Way
- Bainbridge Historical Museum215 Ericksen Ave NE · free, daily 10–4
- Proper Fish112 Madison Ave N, Bainbridge Island
- Seattle Great WheelPier 57, 1301 Alaskan Way
- Link light rail — 1 LineTrains every 12–16 min after 10 PM; ends ~midnight
- Angle Lake Station19955 28th Ave S, SeaTac · free parking backup
- Mount Rainier — Paradise$30/vehicle · road status before you go
