Monthly Archives: August 2013

Seattle Asian Art Museum

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9624773113_137b2023da_bSo, as a last hurrah before school started I wanted to go to the conservatory in Volunteer Park in Seattle. Dear husband and I parked the car and first wandered over to the dahlia garden. From there we spotted Seattle’s Asian Art Museum. Oh! We’ve been meaning to go there. It is a lovely, art deco building constructed in 1933 was originally occupied by the Seattle Art Museum until 1991 when they moved into their new downtown location. The property is a designated Seattle landmark. The space is open and I really liked most of the exhibits. We never did go to conservatory! Maybe next time. The museum’s website is here.

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Poulsbohemian Coffeehouse and Year Three

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9594209995_74f9a40b1c_b(2)It’s been three years since I’ve started this new place of the day project and as last year I wanted to pick an extra nice new place.  The first anniversary I picked the Pagoda in the Chinese Reconciliation Park and last year I picked the Legislative Building in Olympia. This year dear husband and I went to Poulsbohemian Coffeehouse. Now I know that another coffeehouse doesn’t seem all to impressive, but this is my all time favorite coffeehouse. It was comfy seats, great coffee and food, an upbeat staff and a tremendous view.  I ordered my iced Americano and happily sat in a comfy stuff chair facing the window. Life was good.

Looking back at the third year of this project, I have some new observations:

  • This year I’ve added a new continent, Australia, as well as a return trip to Texas and a hop, skip and jump over into Idaho.
  • My most popular type tags are Tacoma, WA, Lakewood, Art, Coffee and Restaurant.
  • My most popular posts for the year have been FedEx (really?!), Time to Stop U Betcha, Haunted Tacoma — Children’s Industrial Home Site, Loews Movie Theater, Casablanca Apartments, St. Rita of Cascia Italian Catholic Church, Marcato Condominiums, the Umbrella Mural on the Storage Box, Five Guys, the Flower House on Vassault and the Snohomish River Trail.
  • Some of the places I checked out alone, but I often brought my husband, daughter and occasionally dogs along for company. They are good sports about the whole thing. Especially the dogs. Since dear daughter is now in college (college!), we’ll be seeing a little less of her.
  • I did miss a couple of days. There were a few days that I was sick and the weather was bad and a couple of days that things just got away from me. It’s OK.
  • Several of this year’s places have gone out of business including TOP Foods (in progress), Movies to Go, Van Lierop Bulb Farm, Park Avenue (I think), the admin office for Tacoma’s School of the Arts and the Norman Bates Motel.
  • I went to some unusual places including a Davy Crocket’s Wife’s grave, the Roslyn Cemetery, Ginkgo Petrified Forest, Washington State University, Australia (Great Barrier Reef, Wild Dolphin Resort, Sydney Opera House), Tacoma Elf Storage, Underground Seattle, Bonsai Gardens, Hiram Chittenden Locks, the Olympic Sculpture Garden, the Buddhist Meditation Center, the Fremont Troll and a park with the top of my dad’s submarine.
  • I have over 900 blog entries.
  • I plan to continue until it isn’t fun anymore or I run out of places, whichever comes first 😀

The encouragement that I’ve received along the way has meant the world to me! Thank you.

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Update April 2016: Happily the coffeehouse is still doing well and I managed to snag the same chair as before!

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Tangled FX 2.1 (Apr 3, 2016, 4:49:35 PM)
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Roslyn Historic Cemetary

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9597328312_0b342e13ac_bI find the arrangement of the Roslyn Cemetery to be fascinating. It is actually 26 different cemeteries that reflected the town’s citizens in the late 1880s. The cemeteries include: Memorial Gardens, New City Cemetery, Lithuanian, Dr. Starcevich (Croatian), Veterans, Moose Lodge, Eagles, Selvio Pellico (Italian), Red Men Lodge, I.O.O.F. Lodge, Slovak, New Knights of Pythias, Old Knights of Pythias, Foresters, Mr. Olivet (African American) Old City Cemetery, Foresters, Druids (Italian), Cacciatori DAfrica (Italian), Serbian, Sokol Lodge (Croatian) and St. Thomas Masonic. Each of the 26 cemeteries has a slightly different look to it. Pictured above is the Veteran’s Cemetery. Some of those buried in these various cemeteries were coal miners who lost their lives through accidents in the mines. One of the photos below (with the swan) commemorates four young firefighters who lost their lives in 2001 fighting the Thirtymile Fire. More information about the cemetery and Roslyn can be found here.

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The Tav

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The Tav at 117 West 4th Avenue, Ellensburg, looks like an ordinary bar from the outside, but on the inside there is a delightful outdoors courtyard area. The food was typical pub fare, but they did a really good job of it. And the company was even better 🙂

The Wedding Bell on my anniversary

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9571001337_734420a8e3_o(1)It is my wedding anniversary, so I was thinking about weddings. And thought brought me to The Wedding Bell at 2914 6th Avenue, Tacoma. Every time I drive eastbound on 6th Avenue, I admire the lovely dresses in their windows. My photos don’t do them justice. To see many of the beautiful dresses, go here. I read in the local paper that The Wedding Bell will be relocating nearby in the near future.

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Grays Harbor Lighthouse, the tallest in Washington

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9567640608_dc4d7cb376_oThe 107′ Grays Harbor Lighthouse in Westport is the tallest lighthouse in Washington State and the third tallest on the West Coast. It was built in 1898 by architect Carl W. Leick to provide a guiding beacon for ships entering Grays Harbor. I said to my dear husband that I was surprised to see that the lighthouse was so far away from the Pacific Ocean. In reading the history I discovered that the lighthouse was originally 400′ from the high tide line, but because of build up caused mostly by the jetty system now in place at the entrance of Grays Harbor, the lighthouse is now 3,000′ from the high tide line. In 1998 the property was leased and then renovated by the Westport-South Beach Historical Society and in 2001 public tours began. In 2004 the Historic Society became the owners of their lighthouse under the National Historic Lighthouse Preservation Act. The property is on the National Historic Register.

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Getting Ready for School

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9560862998_0728a8cd3e_h(1)There are all the school buses just waiting for the first day of school 🙂 This photo was  in the Nalley Valley part of town at the southwest corner of South Tacoma Way and Sprague Avenue. I could only safely capture some of the buses, but the image below (thank you Google Earth!) shows that there are many more buses. I think there is a special star in heaven for school bus drivers!

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Mima Mounts near Maytown

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9541088065_2bc2dea785_bThe Mima Mounds Natural Area Preserve is a designated National Natural Landmark near the Capital State Forest and Maytown. The 3′ to 6′ high mounds themselves are kind of cool, large, rounded hills. The Mima mounds appear in parts of Washington, Oregon, Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana and California, and also in Kenya, Mexico, Canada, Australia and China. Scientists don’t really know what caused them, but theories include pocket gophers, wind blowing around vegetation, seismic activity, shrinking & swelling clay and, my personal favorite, space aliens.

Fair warning, this park requires a Discovery Pass which can be purchased online here.

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I-705

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9535537416_f4f6c19277_bIt was a lovely day and I strolled the area near Tacoma’s Glass Museum and stopped to capture I-705. I was talking to my dear husband and I said the highway wasn’t built when we first moved here and he said it was. We were both right. I moved here at the end of 1989 and he moved here in the spring of 1990 because he stayed in Texas to sell our house there. The road opened between our two moves.

Ginkgo Petrified Forest Museum

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9519078987_09b46847d8_bOn my way home from dropping dear daughter off at college, I stopped at the Ginkgo Petrified Forest State Park in Vantage, WA.There are over 40 species which have been petrified in the 7,470 acre park. Per Wikipedia the area had originally been lush and wet, but much of the vegetation was covered in volcanic ash and eventually became petrified. The park opened in 1938 and much of the work had been done by the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC). I didn’t realize that petrified wood is the state gem for Washington! The site is one of 594 properties to have the National Natural Landmark Designation. I would have liked to have stayed longer, but I wanted to get home, I didn’t have the right shoes for rattle snakes and it was really hot!

Two of the photos below are from the nearby gem shop, which was also very cool.

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