Views of Sequim, the Olympic Peninsula. . .and beyond
The Mariner Café has opened in its new location. It moved from East Washington to Sequim Village Plaza on West Washington, the former location of Tarcisio’s. We decided to add another restaurant to our circuit and tried it out yesterday. They made the cut.
We had breakfast fare. DH declared the country potatoes the best he’s had in a long time. We were also impressed with the dessert menu, above. We kept our distance, but it looks like pie heaven. Dangerous.
Your table’s waiting.
The Public Utility District (PUD) is working its way through replacing a run of power line poles. It’s not glamorous but if it assures uninterrupted power I’m all for it. New poles were laid down next to the old and crews cut back brush around the old ones. A survey crew did some work. Then the cherry picker, above, hoisted a couple of men into range to attach poles which reposition the wires. That was one big truck. Notice that it’s got braces at the bottom. Flaggers directed traffic around the operation.
Many years ago I ran an educational tree-planting program. The local conservation corps helped us out with a two-person auger to pre-dig holes for the trees. Faced with that or manual labor the auger was pretty awesome. And I can assure you that the auger the PUD pulled out to dig the pole hole was more than awesome. I guess this is where I admit that I’m impressed with what heavy equipment can do.
Just like that the hole was dug. Picking up the new pole and positioning it into the hole was quick work.
Here’s the rig that did the drilling and heavy lifting. A couple more poles and I think the wiring will shift over to the new poles.
Coming soon to a garden near you!
I’ve long wanted to see and experience a building designed by Frank Ghery and our visit to Seattle last week afforded that opportunity. The Experience Music Project, or EMP Museum, is housed in a Ghery building. Pretty amazing. That is a monorail train emerging through the building in the center left shot; the track also shows in the bottom of the two right hand shots.
One knockout exhibit in the Chihuly Garden and Glass in Seattle is in the Sealife Room. Like many of Chihuly’s large pieces, the centerpiece of the room initially looks like a huge freeform, sinuous pile of wild glass shapes. Look closer and it’s filled with identifiable golden shapes: shells, anemones, octopus, eye candy at it’s most fun. A fellow photographer in the room moved from one spot to the next, snapping away, and repeatedly murmuring, “Oh, wow!”
This is part of the Persian Ceiling, a room that serves as a passageway between exhibit rooms. Look up and it is a backlit kaleidoscope of shapes and color.
Some of the exhibits are as much about light and reflection as they are the glass shapes. Look at this image. It’s hard to tell where the glass stops and the reflection begins.
Dale Chihuly is a glass artist whose work has redefined art glass for decades. Although his work is exhibited worldwide, he is a Pacific Northwesterner and has exhibits in both Seattle and Tacoma. I was excited to visit his Garden and Glass collection last week at the Seattle Center. Works are exhibited indoors, beautifully lit in low light and open atrium rooms, and outdoors where they sparkle and reflect the natural light around them. The shot above was taken in the outdoor garden. The garden is filled with large, glossy globes, free form leaves and tubular shapes arching in spirals and reaching outward for the sun.
This image is from the Glasshouse, as was one I posted in a collage yesterday that showed the Space Needle. Huge “vines” of glass poppies explode in a sinuous conga dance across the top of the arched glass roof of this building.
In the Macchia Forest room oversized “bowls” filled with color lean inward to surround visitors in a riot spun of glossy colors. Stunning!
Tomorrow I’ll show a few more highlights from my visit to Chihuly.
Last week we turned a trip to the doctor in Seattle into an opportunity to be tourists again after an absence of many years. As we approached the Space Needle at Seattle Center I realized that I didn’t have any shots of this icon. So here’s a collage of several views, including reflections and images taken at Chihuly Garden and Glass, a spot I’ll highlight for you soon. (Yep. That’s a selfie of me on the bottom right.)