The local elk

There’s a herd of elk that calls Sequim home. I’ve only photographed them a couple of times because I’ve never been in the right place at the right time. A call on Saturday from a local blog follower (thank you, SAM!) alerted me that they were gathered in a field toward the north end of town.

The last time I encountered the herd I only saw one bull. I was surprised to see at least six this time. They were at some distance but my little Lumix camera zoomed in well enough to get this shot.

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Remembering Martin Luther King Jr. today with this quote from him, “The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.” King stood tall in the challenging times of his life.

The whale bone

This unnamed sculpture by Alex Anderson is installed at Valley Creek Estuary Park in Port Angeles. If you’re not familiar with whale physiology it’s styled after a whale vertebrae. The scale of the piece is substantial. It weighs seven tons and is 12 feet tall and four feet thick. It was a $65,000 gift to Port Angeles by an anonymous donor.

Art or energy?

These three wind turbines were installed last September at Waterfront Park in Port Angeles, Sequim’s westerly neighboring town. The first time I saw them I thought they were pretty dramatic sculptures. Which, actually, they may well be. Or not. They may also generate power.

There’s some controversy around these units. City officials thought they could generate power for lighting in the park. But they also wanted art…and nobody’s actually sure how much wind power they may harvest. They’re not rotating for now. Port Angeles is involved in “an inspection-related dispute with the manufacturer.”

Remembering a barn

When I moved to Sequim in 2010 you could see this barn from Highway 101, west of River Road. It had a swaybacked roof but the cupola was still upright. The image above is from September 2012 as the roof caved deeper and the cupola sank into its recesses.

I visited it a month later here and here as it was clear that time was not kind to this old barn. By December 2012 here it was not looking good. By July 2014 I declared it dead here.

I revisited it recently to see how it was doing. There’s not much standing and there’s little enough that it’s hard to see through tall weeds from my original vantage point.

It’s sad to see it gone.