First stop was in Seattle. Kathy, Bob, and I clambered over about a mile of rocky beach to see the unique treehouse that Pete Nelson built for the show "Treehouse Masters" in 2011. The story was that a couple owned a piece of beachfront property that wasn't large enough to build a conventional house, so Nelson created a treehouse in the general shape of a lighthouse. There didn't appear to be anyone home when we arrived.
Neat, huh?
The shoreline has the wreckage of several homes that lost the battle with storms and gravity, and a number of really nice homes still perched on the cliff. One caught our eye especially for the statue the homeowner had built.
Known as "The Architect", it's supposedly the likeness of the home's builder. Now that's odd.
But the most fun for me was a visit Kathy and I made to the Chihuly Gardens, where the artist and his students have created some magical structures from blown glass. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dale_Chihuly I was truly blown away (pun intended) by all the shapes and forms of his pieces. Herewith a sampling of the ones indoors in the museum (with apologies for the poor photography):
(This is a detail of the piece below.)
Better still were the pieces displayed outside in the 'gardens':
(Every curl is an individually-blown shape; all hung on a steel superstructure.)
(Can you spot the glass ferns among the real ones?)
But the masterpiece, for me, was in the airplane hanger-sized 'conservatory':
Breath-takingly awesome.
The Chihuly Museum and Gardens are in the large complex of attraction around the Space Needle.
https://www.google.com/maps/place/Space+Needle/@47.620506,-122.349277,17z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m2!3m1!1s0x5490151f4ed5b7f9:0xdb2ba8689ed0920d?hl=en
Including the EMP museum, which I really need to visit next time. Really freaky structure - which is wrapped around the monorail tracks.
As I've said before, there are a lot of homeless in Seattle. But, not surprisingly, there are lots of wealthy folks as well. Take the houses I mentioned before along the shoreline in the Magnolia district, or these floating houses along the shore of Union Lake.
But enough commentary - back to sightseeing.
I visited the waterfront area, home to the 'wheel',
and the Pike Place Market, a rambling twisty structure housing hundreds of vendors selling (like any flea market) a large assortment of flowers, food and gee-gaws of all kinds. It also contains this very precisely-labeled public restroom.
Outside a fireboat was making an exuberant display, for no apparent reason.
And in a park near one end of the Market there was this sculpture.
It's entitled the 'Tree of Life', and there are leaf-shaped cut-outs, but it still looks like a diving whale to me. I guess I'd never make it as an art critic.
And of course I cannot stop and smell them, but I will stop and photograph flowers, especially if they're yellow.
On to Sacramento!
