Category: Seattle

Illahee State Park is a 75-acre Washington state park located in the hamlet of Illahee, just north of East Bremerton, on Port Orchard Bay, part of Puget Sound. The word ‘Illahee’ means earth or country in Native American tradition. [Source : Wikipedia].

We made a stop there on Saturday as part of an overnight outing to Paul’s place in Hansville.  There was rain and cool weather on the Kitsap Peninsula on Saturday, which we welcomed. The rain did not make it all the way across the sound to the city, but it may get there on Sunday.

This empty house on the corner of 16th Ave E and Thomas St here on Capitol Hill is by the bus stop for the No 8 and No 43 bus (that I take sometimes), and so I had known since May that its days were numbered.   Still, I was a little shocked to see the house all broken down when I walked by tonight.   Built in 1900, it held out until now – but was in such disrepair that it was simply time to break it down and build something new in its place.

It’s not a real beach, but we call it one anyway : Madison Park Beach at the spot where Madison Avenue runs into Lake Washington.  Lake Washington separates Seattle proper from the ‘East Side’ where the city of Bellevue, and Redmond, the home of the Microsoft campus, are.

My walkabout on Friday took me by the Russian Orthodox Church on 13th Avenue here on Capitol Hill.  The blue-roofed canopy at the front door is missing and hopefully just being renovated before being put back in its place.   Seattle has about 10,000 Russian-speaking residents.

I could tell the tourist season is in full swing when in 3 minutes I spotted the Emerald City Trolley, the Duck and the monorail during my visit to downtown on Wednesday.  Tourists that go up in the Space Needle report that there is a haziness in the air looking north, and even looking south to Mt Rainier.  Much of the haziness is actually smoke from wildfires from way across the border in British Columbia, Canada!

It was the warmest June ever here in Seattle with eight days at 85°F (30°C) or higher in June. On Sunday, east of the Cascade Mountains, the mercury hit 113°F (45°C) in Walla Walla in central Washington State. Yikes!

I usually manage to cool down my bedroom during warm summer evenings by opening the window for a few hours .. but that strategy has not worked these last few weeks. So it was a relief to get my hands on a used portable conditioner, and now I can cool down the bedroom nicely before bedtime.

Check out the cool Space Needle ‘panocam’ at this link.  If it is night time, one can always click on the ‘Best Views’ links on the panel on the right to see recorded views from previous days.   This one below shows a cruise ship at one of the two terminals here.  In 2015, Seattle will host 192 cruise ships and more than 895,000 passengers. (I still have to take my obligatory cruise up to Alaska!  Yes!).

We celebrated Independence Day on Saturday here in the United States.   Here is a picture of the fireworks over Seattle’s Lake Union.  The colors of the fireworks were mostly red, white and blue (of course).

It’s already warm here in Seattle with temperatures heading toward 90 °F/ 32 °C for the weekend.  (The warm weather usually arrives after the 4th of July weekend).  The dry conditions and warm weather is not a good combination, of course.  A fire in the Wenatchee area in central Washington State has destroyed 24 homes and heavily damaged three businesses since Sunday, and thousands of people have been told to be ready to evacuate on a moment’s notice.   Hopefully more fires can be contained early on. The  2014 Carlton Complex was the largest wildfire in Washington State history : the fire burned 300 homes and 400 square miles.

The City of Seattle has painted 11 crosswalks in the Capitol Hill neighborhood with rainbow colors to just in time for the weekend’s Gay Pride celebrations.   It’s not an original idea, though – the Castro neighborhood in San Francisco has had a few of these since October of last year.

I love this red R neon sign in the window of the Union Bar in Hillman City where we had a bite to eat on Wednesday night. It is a nod to the Rainier beer brand (which is no longer brewed*), and indirectly to Rainier Mountain and the Rainier valley.  Hillman City is located a mile further south than Columbia City, and in August 2013 Seattle Weekly named Hillman City the “Best Up-and-Coming Neighborhood” in Seattle.    The original neon “R” from the brewery is now on display at Seattle’s Museum of History and Industry.

*Correction posted 6/28 : Rainier beer is still being brewed, but by the Pabst Brewing Company that now owns and markets the brand.

We walked around Pike and Pine Streets on Capitol Hill to check out how the building boom (of apartments) is progressing – along with the interesting people that are out and about on the street.   Here are a few pictures.

My windows are back – so now I can spy on everyone walking by in the street in front of the house again.  I could also sit on my little porch, we don’t do that anymore now, do we? Life has become too fretful and frantic.

It’s getting warm enough here in Seattle now (78 °F/ 26° C) so that I need to open my windows late afternoon and into the evening to let the cooler air in.

I check out these free-standing lattice radio antenna towers every time I walk over to Trader Joe’s (grocery store) across the street from them.   The ground elevation there is about 410 ft above sea level, to which can be added the heights of each of the three towers – 594 ft (181 m), 637 ft (194 m) and 682 ft (208 m) for an elevation of the top of the towers of about 1,000 ft.   A slowly blinking red light at the top warns low-flying objects (as well as UFOs) at night to steer clear !

(I did not make it out to San Francisco on Monday due to a bad cold).  My old house’s wood-frame windows with their double glazing (two panes of glass filled with gas) had started to fog up inside with water vapor some time ago, and so it had become time to send them in for repairs.

I was barely up when Bryan and Paul (the famous and well-known among friends here ‘Double Dog’ contractors) showed up and in a shockingly short time had the four sets of double hung windows out of their frames.  The Cherry Creek Window van (company that will repair the windows) was already waiting outside and took them in.  So .. can someone not come and easily steal my house’s windows?  I wanted to know from Bryan.  The answer : the thieves would have to be inside the house – but then why would they? the windows are made for your house in a custom size.

So now I have a house with a hurricane-battened-down-the-hatches look for a few days until the windows come back!

We always say here in the USA that Memorial Day is the unofficial start of summer.  So here is the (somewhat cheesy) cover of a brochure of the summer events scheduled for the Emerald City.   Check out the orca frolicking in the foreground right by Pier 57 (where the Ferris Wheel is) .. a very unlikely sight!

And I’m still getting used to the Ferris Wheel’s silhouette on the waterfront –  but that would pale in comparison to the changes that will be brought when the Alaskan Viaduct (double-decker highway right above the waterline) eventually comes down when its replacement tunnel had been completed.

Here’s a nice Washington State quilt that caught my eye at a store where Bryan, Gary and I stopped by on Sunday.  We also tried to get a nice close-up look at the Polar Pioneer oil rig, but it was not possible to drive right up to it .. which should not have been a surprise, I guess.

We have a huge oil rig destined for drilling off the coast of Alaska docked here in Elliott Bay at Terminal 5 in the Port of Seattle.  There were plenty of protesters in kayaks our in force today on the water around the rig (called kayaktivists).  I want to run out tomorrow and go and take a close-up look of the intimidating drilling monster.   Here is the article in the Seattle Times that I borrowed the pictures from.

There are reports of heavy downpours and tornadoes in the central parts of the USA this weekend – but here in the Pacific Northwest we are enjoying mild and tranquil weather.