City Time

Some of our beach combing booty.

So the past week or so was devoted to hanging out in Tacoma and Seattle, and visiting friends and relatives. We hunkered down in Gig Harbor, near Tacoma to wait out and incoming storm. It was nice, but nothing really special. The park managers were kind enough to pose for me, and I like a couple of the images I did of them. They may make it into my Nomadsproject. A good place to hang for a few days.

Richard and Sherrie with their rig.

Visited states.

The bad weather never really got that bad though. It has been raining, but not that much and mostly at night. We keep expecting it to be pouring down, but other than some occasional heavy showers, there hasn’t been much. Most days have been dry enough to do everything we wanted, so it’s worked out pretty well. In Tacoma, we visited the Glass Museum and walked around town some.

Venting stack for the Hot Shop at the Glass Museum.

View of the Bridge of Glass near the Glass Museum.

I was kind of dreading the museum a little. Since Tacoma is the home a Dale Chihuly, I expected the the museum to be loaded with his gaudy, florid creations. But not so. It turned out it was a really interesting place with several intriguing exhibits, including a really amazing installation by by Ingalena Klenell and Beth Lipman. One gallery consisted entirely of sheets of formed glass suspended by wires from the ceiling in segments to create an amazing landscape complete with trees, waterfalls, mist and mountains – all using colorless glass. The entire museum is built around “The Hot Shop”. This is a workshop where there are constant glass working demonstrations presented. The workshop is a three or four story conical shaped structure, the interior bottom of which is the work area. The construction of the conical shape is in order to allow venting through the top opening, of the high intensity furnaces used to fire the glass. A quite impressive building.

The stack at night.

Outside, crossing the rail tracks and highway, was the Bridge of Glass. This is where the Chihuly’s were located. The bridge wasn’t actually made of glass, but on the bridge structure itself, display cases full of Chihuly glass were housed. Also, in the roof of the structure were more sculptures – almost like they were dumped in there. It was pretty cool. A good presentation of his work.

Chihuly's up the wazooly.

More Chihuly's.

Ceiling of Chihuly's.

More Chihuly's.

Dinner time view at the Murano Hotel. Tacoma, WA

It was also my birthday in Tacoma, so we found the Murano Hotel restaurant in which to celebrate. Since it had been so overcast, we were really surprised when, as we drove into town on the one clear afternoon, Mt Rainier put in an appearance. It was actually a shock to see it loom so large over the city.During dinner, we had a terrific view of the mountain as the sun went down. A very nice way to turn 57.

Skyline view from the Space Needle. Seattle, WA

In the Seattle area, we visited friends in Redmond, and later, Mary’s last living 90 year old uncle Stan. We had a nice dinner out together with Stan, her cousin Kim and friend Ed. We really played tourist for several days. We checked out the Space Needle, Pike Place Market, the Experience Music Project (EMP) which also housed the Science Fiction Museum. We also walked around Washington Park, browsed the Olympic Sculpture Park, visited the Frye Museum and the Photo Center Northwest. And of course, made plenty of room for cafe’s and coffee – it is the home of Starbucks after all.

Tornado of musical instruments at EMP.

Japanese Maples at Washington Park. WA

Playing with foliage.

Exterior of the EMP building. Seattle, WA

One of the entrances to EMP.

More of the EMP exterior.

Olympia Sculpture Park. Seattle, WA

Pike Place Market. Seattle, WA

Interior of Seattle's public library.

Ahhhh, time for a coffee break.

A nice week. Now it’s back to Portland for a day to catch the opening of the Members Showcase show at Newspace Center for Photography. I have a print in the show and for a change, I get to see a show my work is in. We are camping in the Mt, Saint Helens area for a few days and are hoping to actually see the mountain at some point. Doesn’t look good at this point with all the rain the past few days.

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