October 29-31, 2015 Grayland Beach State Park, Washington

We left the city and came back to the beach.

It was 64 degrees and sunny at the beach when we arrived. This is after it rained on the way here. This is our campsite at Grayland Beach State Park.  It looks like a brand new park, or at least our loop. 50 amp and water.  We are just steps from the beach. It is supposed to rain a couple inches in the next couple days, so we went out to enjoy the sun on the beach while it was out. No clam digging on the beach by us.

 

Mackerel sky reflected in a pool of water at the beach. Today it is raining. Crop circle on the beach. looks like something aliens might leave. We are out of the national park’s  protected beaches. People can drive cars on them here.

Manta Landsailer that cruised by us on the beach today.  It rained all last night and most of the day Halloween.

When the rain finally let up we went to town to sight see. We stopped at the Bog Water brewing and Cranberry road winery conveniently located in the same building. I loved the Cranberry Cinnamon wine. They grow a lot of cranberries in this area. There is even an Ocean Spray processing plant here. The cranberries grow in bogs, hence Bog water brewing. Then we went to the Black Beard brewery to taste also. We stopped at the Grayland lighthouse to tour it. They were setting up to have trick or treating for kids, then in the evening they turned on the light in the light house and had haunted light house tours, so we came back later.

 

I climbed a viewing platform in a driving rain storm and saw these enormous waves crashing on the levy. Also the marina through the rain and fog.

 

What a surprise. We had trick or treaters.  5 Halloweens in the bus and the first ones.  Of course we had no candy, so I gave them change out of the change bag. They brought a bowl of candy, since they figured that no one in the campground had candy. They were cute. They ran back to their parents yelling, ‘We got MONEY!’ The sun came out right before sunset . I walked to the beach, it was covered with puddles and still very windy.

 

Sunset and puddles. We went back to the light house for the haunted tour.

Looking up the spiral staircase was this huge spider. Near the top was the ghost of the first light keeper and company playing for us.

    

John looked right into the light behind the Fresnel lens. Like looking into the sun. Silly boy. This is the tallest light house in Washington, built in the 1800’s.

October 28, 2015 Tacoma, Washington

We went to Tacoma today to view a couple museums. Tacoma is only a 15 minute drive from where we are.

The Chihuly Bridge of Glass spans I-705 between the Museum of Glass and Union Station.  It has three installations. The Venetian Wall, part of which is in the first photo, showcases 109 delicate Chihuly sculptures. Two  translucent  ice-blue Crystal Towers rise 40 feet above the bridge’s midpoint. Between the Crystal Towers you can see the top of the hot shop of the Museum of glass.

The third feature is the ceiling of the Seafoam Pavilion which suspends more than 2,300 colorful glass objects above the heads of pedestrians. Union Station was built in 1911 and functioned as a train station until the early 1980’s. It is now the federal courthouse, but inside there are Chihuly installations. This is the dome of union station with the glass chandelier and  another huge piece in the arch.

Orange glass flowers adorn the  half moon-shaped Monarch Window on the second floor. Through the window you can see the top of the hot shop and the Crystal towers on the bridge. In front of the Museum of Glass is the  Martin Blanks “Fluent Steps” in a 210 foot reflecting pool. 754 individually hand–sculpted pieces of glass form several islands of clear-glass sculpture. One grouping resembles mist rising from a meadow and another appears as a cascading water fall.  The  museum has a 90 foot high cone sheathed in diamond-shaped stainless steel tiles. I am sure on a clear sunny day all these glass sculptures would look even better.

Inside the lobby is this huge piece of painted glass.  Inside the dome is the hot shop. It has an expert Hot Shop team that works with visiting artists. There are about 40 visiting artists a year. The Museum of Glass has one of the  largest museum residency programs in the US.  As part of the residency  the artists donate one of their pieces to the museum.

 

The museum is devoted to changing exhibitions of contemporary and frequently edgy works executed in glass.  The birds and the flower are made by Joey Kirkpatrick and Flora C Mace.  The raven is made out of wood, the blue jay is on the side of a glass vessel and the flowers are real flowers suspended in a glass resin. The other pieces  are some of Chihuly’s venetian pieces.

The kitty is part of the  exhibit of pieces made from drawings by children. The pumpkins and penguin are in the gift shop. The next museum is the Lemay America’s car museum.  It is a 4 level 165,000 square foot building which showcases hundreds of cars spanning the more than 100 history of cars. Also is a photo of Tacoma from the top floor of the museum.

This is the top level with the muscle cars. You view each floor, then walk down ramps on one side with more exhibits and then from the bottom you walk up ramps with more exhibits to where you started. It is an amazing place. The top photo are glass hood ornaments that were made in the Museum of Glass, below is a flag made from tiny cars.

Harold Lamay started out with  a chain of garages called Lucky’s.  He had 3,000 cars in his collection. He is pictured here with his wife. Here are some of the cars. He donated 300 to this museum, there are another 500 in another museum-we didn’t go to that one , and there are about 300 at his house. I was in overload with all the cars. The yellow car is a solar car.

October 25-27, 2015 Puyallup, Washington

We are now camped south of Seattle at Washington State  Fair grounds  in Puyallup, Washington. We are mostly visiting friends. The traffic here is so horrible that it puts a damper on sight seeing.

Last night we visited with Hal and Jan. Hal is my  friend that got me hooked up with the retired smokejumpers trail crews as a cook and a ski trip to Austria. Jan is his new lady friend, very cool lady. Jan cooked us dinner, it was fun to visit with them. Today we met Jennie and her husband Peter for a hike. John has been kayaking with Jennie for years. It was a 39 mile drive each way, it took three hours in the Seattle traffic.

 

We hiked on Cougar mountain. Very pretty place and a  fun hike. It rained the whole day, we are in the Pacific Northwest still.  After the hike we had lunch at a local brewpub. It was great to see them.

 

John got this beautiful  photo of sunrise in the fog before I got up. The coach at the Fairgrounds, in the fog with no nice sunrise colors. It is a large grassy lot with full hookups,  no bathrooms, right next to the fair grounds. 

We braved downtown Seattle to have lunch with some friends. It was foggy when we went into the city. We had  a 35 mile drive each way, also took 3 hours round trip. Downtown Seattle and the Space Needle in downtown.

 

We had lunch in Fisherman’s Terminal area. There were 100’s of huge commercial fishing boats. The Fisherman’s memorial statue on the pier is  a  35 feet tall bronze.

Packed with boats. We met for lunch at Chinooks a fabulous sea food restaurant right on the pier.

 

I could not resist, but the sinks in the bathroom at Chinooks were really cool.  In the front of the restaurant was Woods Fisheries. I like that Wood’s has certified wild seafood that is harvested locally with care.

  

We had lunch with our friends Doug and Robin . John has known them since they  all lived in Eagle, Colorado in the 70’s. Delicious lunch and it was fun to meet and  catch up with them. This is the view from our table, the sun came out while we were eating.

We visited Doug’s metal shop-The Tinman. He makes mostly copper and zinc  custom architectural pieces. Really nice shop with lots of cool tools. He is an artist with the metal.  On the long drive back we could see Mt Rainer outside the city.