Under typical Seattle cloudy weather, with some friends who came to visit me in my new hometown (Seattle) we started the day a little late. We first decided to start the day out buying some tickets for a concert downtown, so regardless of what we ended up doing during the day we had to come back downtown at 8pm. We arrived near noon to buy those tickets, for a band only my friends had heard, a band that they highly recommended called Minus the Bear. Since they were going to be in Seattle for a week we had looked up key locations to make sure to visit, among these the Jimmy Hendrix Memorial and Bruce Lee's tomb. Since we shared a connection to the early 90's rock music we had also looked up Kurt Cobain's hometown as a must. We kinda decided what to do on a moment by moment basis so in the morning we set out to buy the tickets, go visit the Jimmy Hendrix memorial and take it from there.
We arrived at the memorial in the early afternoon, I was a little apprehensive about doing touristic stuff where other people were mourning, perhaps a relative, close by. The memorial itself wasn't hard to find since it was within sight of the parking lot. We approached it, and read through the engravings on the granite like stone. Soon the feeling of being out of place vanished replaced by a sense of wonder at the words and images before us. We naturally took some pictures and my friend left a cartoon of his music band within the memorial, as token of gratitude and as a prayer for good fortune. After asking at the office if Bruce Lee was buried there (which he wasn't) we decided it was time to move on. The question was where? Between 2-3pm and having to arrive back downtown by 8pm, What was a good option?
We decided on going to Aberdeen, Kurt's hometown, "How far could it be?...But we don't know how to get there?.." and talking on the parking lot of the graveyard, across the street came into view a Gas station with the usual store at its side.. "We can buy a map..." And it was decided.
A quick visit to the store, with a map, some snacks and beverages we set off. It turned out to be close to a 2 hour drive and a lucky one at that. Along the road we saw flashing signs that read "I-5 now open" and getting close to our destination we understood why, the area was flooded and just that day the roads had opened up again.
Coming close to Aberdeen we realized that we knew of a museum that had information about Nirvana, we heard somewhere there was bench that fans had been signing since his death but we had no idea where to locate them and chances were that Aberdeen wasn't a 1-block town.
As we came closer we saw the welcoming sign to Aberdeen with the phrase "Come as you are" written under it.
After stopping on the side of the road taking some pictures and slipping in the mud we decided to into town and ask around. Soon after we saw another peculiar sign, a hand-painted sign announcing a Star Wars shop which caught our attention for a little bit and then we went on. First we stopped at a local butchers shop, asked around and soon met someone who had heard Kurt and Kris play at a gathering before they were famous but had no idea if such a bench existed. He gave us directions to a park where Kurt used to hang out, thinking that might a place to start looking. As we followed the directions, that were pretty straight forward, somehow we never came to see a park but we noticed the Star Wars shop whose sign had caught our attention earlier. Driving by, thinking it would be cool to visit the store and at the same time disregarding the notion due to our time limit and purpose, I saw upon the windows of the shop a hand written sign stating "Nirvana information inside".
We pulled over and went inside the shop. The shop hosted a large star wars collection and my friends soon became lost among its collectibles, both new and old. I quickly approached the owner who was very friendly and I let him know the purpose of our visit. He quickly showed me a corner of the shop where he had Nirvana collectibles on display and sale, some black and white photocopies of points of interest within Aberdeen regarding Nirvana and gave me directions how to find Kurt's childhood house and a bridge where he used spend some of his time. He didn't know of a bench but gave information of who might. After thanking him and complimenting his shop he graciously showed us a tattoo of princes Lea, which he asked ... to autograph at a convention and also had the autograph tattooed.
We came upon the bridge and parked on the nearest block to it, while trying to find a way to the riverbank and under the bridge, we soon found ourselves in someones backyard. A fellow came out of his garage where he was at work and asked if he could help us, we explained why we were there and he directed us (he called out to us if we had already visited Kurt's old house) to the other side of the road where we found a muddy trail right beside the beginning of the bridge.
We found a tall sign with Kurt's picture on it, explaining that the river was the Wishkha river, and some benches beside it.
