Category Archives: WA State – King County

The Blue Poppies of Weyerhaeuser Rhododendrom Gardens

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14068639349_2d35260236_bSeeing a blue poppy has been on my life list and yesterday I finally saw one when I took dear daughter and her friend to the Weyerhaeuser Rhododendron Gardens in Federal Way. We actually went to see the Rhododendrons and while there were many still in bloom I feel like we missed the peak viewing by a couple of weeks. We were having a grandtime walking the trails and were admiring a small pond when a pleasant woman asked if we had seen the blue poppies. Ummm, no, guess we missed that section of trail. Thank you lady! The poppies are taller than I expected and there was some space between the stalks. They were just a little translucent and there was a bit of rain on some of the petals. The photos below feature the blue poppies, but include some other flowers and some Hilltop Artist glass work that is currently on display.

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Rustic Metal Yard Art, Covington

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14069781826_a7e4f25cc7_bI was in Covington wondering what I was going to snap a photo of when I found this. Really, it was like a gift. Rustic Metal Yard Art is located on Kent Black Diamond Road SE and is relatively new. It wasn’t there a couple of years ago. The Rooster is the largest piece and stands very tall. But there is a full assortment of other works including a space craft and a peacock. Arbors, Statues,Trellises and Fountains were on display. They were closed when I went by, so all the photos were taken through or over the fence.

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Breath at the Starplex Cinema, Federal Way

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13524609005_d2e4ef361a_bDear husband and I were delighted to see that the movie Her was still playing somewhere and the place is the Federal Way Gateway Cinema (Starplex Cinema, at 2501 S. Gateway Center, Federal Way, WA, 98003. This is a discount theater, with our tickets being $2 each. We went to the 11:15 show and had the theater to ourselves. Their website is here.

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Kelsey Creek Farm, Bellevue

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13340504343_aa9c5da73e_bI’ve been wanting to visit Kelsey Creek Farms Park at 13204 SE 8th in Bellevue for a while, so on Saturday after dropping off dear daughter for her ride back to college I stopped by. There was a birthday party going on and plenty of children in the under five crowd. The 150 acre original site had been a forest and was developed as the Twin Valley Dairy Farm in the 1920s. Despite pressure from real estate developers, in the 1960s 80 acres of the property was sold to the City of Bellevue for use as a park. It receives over 200,000 visits a year. ThePark’s website is here.

The log cabin is the Frasier House, built in 1888 and moved to Kelsey Creek Farms Park in 1974.  It was built by two Norwegian woodsmen and lived in for a short time. Mostly it was used as storage. 

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The Roosevelt Hotel, Seattle

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13132435144_93d487c7e7_b When Dear Husband and I first came to visit Washington State we stayed at the Roosevelt Hotel at 1531 7th Ave, Seattle, WA 98101 in downtown Seattle. I remember the hotel stay as being a good experience, but I was so happy to be exploring Seattle for the first time, that it would have been hard to dampen my excitement! It was completed in the deco style in 1929 with John Graham and Harold Lockland as the architects.

 

 

 

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Asahel Curtis’ Seattle Home in 1916

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12532231773_ed25a9071e_cThis house, which sold in the summer of 2013 for $935,000 was constructed in 1913 and per Tacoma Public Library it was occupied in 1916 by Asahel Curtis and his wife, Florence. The house is located in the 1100 block of 36th Avenue and has a view of Lake Washington, the city skyline of Bellevue and Mt Rainier. Asahel Curtis and his brother, Edward Curtis, were well known photographers. They had a parting of ways in about 1900 and never reconciled. Asahel married Florence in 1902 and in 1911 he established his own photography studio.

While I was wandering around in Seattle, I stumbled upon a charming little free library in a newspaper box. I also found a group of four friends taking a dip in a very chilly Lake Washington. Altogether a good day!

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Hing Hay Park, Seattle

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11765614935_c04a82fe90_bHing Hay Park at 423 Maynard Ave S. is a vital part of Seattle’s International District. The name translates to “Park for Pleasurable Gatherings”. The pagoda, or Grand Pavilion, was constructed in Taipei, Taiwan in 1974. The mural facing the park shows an elaborate dragon. When I visited there was a group of men playing chess on the over-sized chess board and others were playing ping pong.

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Endless Celebration, Bellevue

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ART bellevueEndless Celebration in front of Bellevue Place, Bellevue, WA is a fifty one foot cast bronze sculpture commissioned by Kemper Freeman Jr. and created by Gesso Cocteau. It was installed on  November 18, 2005. It is the tallest standing cast bronze sculpture in the United States. To see more of the artist’s work including additional photographs of Endless Celebration, go to her website.

Giant Shoe Museum, Seattle

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Giant ShoeHow could I have lived here all this time and not have known that Seattle had the World Famous Giant Shoe Museum! It’s in the lower level of the Pike Place Market and the photo shows all of it. For $1.00 in quarters one can see the entire exhibit. The stool on the left cost $.50 and the two in the middle cost $0.25 each and the one on the right explains the museum ad is free. The museum was built in 1997 by Sven Sundbaum and is next to Old Seattle Paperworks. One of the windows features the size 37 shoes of the world’s tallest man, Robert Wadlow. That is him on the mural in his real height of 8’11.1″. Robert Wadlow died at the age of 22 after complications from blister. 40,000 people attended his funeral. When I stand next to him, the top of my head is in the middle of the W of his last name. 11485114596_27375cfbf6_b

Clifford Lives at the Scholastic Book Warehouse

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11246517446_c12a43425a_bI turned the corner at the Scholastic Book Warehouse at 5103 D St, Auburn, WA 98001 and there was Clifford, the Big Red Dog! He is about the size that he is portrayed in the ever loved Clifford books. Clifford has his own, barking, website. The Clifford books were first published in 1963 and Clifford acts as the mascot for Scholastic Books.

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