Staycation, highlights day 4...TULIPS!

Today, after dropping our daughter off at the airport en route to Boston and her last grad school interview, Don and I continued up north to the Tulip Festival in Skagit Valley. I'll let the photos of the day do the rest of the talking.

It was a beautiful day. The only semi-weird thing that happened was finding two banjo-playing musicians out in the middle of the field.

Next up: we stay home and do some work around the house.

Staycation, highlights day 3

Today, after a stopover at the GKHS library for a little work boxing up surplus books, Don and I drove south to explore more weird and curious aspects of our state. Today we explored the Mima Mounds, a ghost town, and the Black Houses of Olympia.

1. Mima Mounds

"Mima mounds (sounds like dime-a) were named in 1841, when a vast pimply prairie (the Mima Prairie) was discovered in western Washington during the United States Exploring Expedition. In the centuries since, the source of this strange landscape has defied explanation. A single field may be covered in a million mounds that are several thousand years old, yet no builder has ever been found" (LiveScience.)

It is really hard to get the full effect of the mounds from ground level so this photo is very uninspiring, but take a look at the aerial shot taken by the DNR below:

The mounds are four or eight feet high and eight to twelve feet in diameter. What a curiosity. No one knows what caused them and it is a big scientific mystery with lots of ideas what caused the mounds, but no answers.

2. Old Bordeaux, a ghost town

After driving around for a while and then wandering around in a forest near the Capitol Forest we finally found the remains of an old logging town, Bordeaux, which was abandoned over 60 years ago when it was logged out. All that remains is the ruins of the saw mill, a vault from the company store, the smokestack, and the foundation for a steam donkey. Take a look at this website for photos of Bordeaux when the town was a busy spot here.

The vault is all that remains from the company store. Notice the ferns on the roof and the graffiti.

The forest is taking the buildings back.

Pilings left behind can still be seen in the creek.

3. The Black Houses of Olympia

"Owned and rented out by a Gothic dentist (and bar/coffee shop owner) named Dr. Duane Moore, the Black Houses of Olympia have become a thing of legend. Supposedly, Moore began painting the houses black in an attempt to drive down property values throughout the city, and some say they form a pentagram when mapped out. Who knows. What we do know is that many of the houses have cryptic names such as the Track House and the Black Womb, and one of them features a mural painted by one of the members of Slayer" (Things to do in Pac NW.)

We don't know if we saw any of the houses with unusual names but we do know that we found several of the black houses as we drove around Olympia. Nearly all of them also had badly overgrown yards, which would also drive down property values. 

We drove past two other black houses, one was so overgrown we couldn't get a good shot, and the other was black but it had some orange trim, so we didn't think it counted.

Tomorrow we are heading up North again. After dropping Carly off for her flight to her last Grad School interview we will drive up to Skagit County to see TULIPS! (OK, not weird but wonderful.)

Staycation update, day 2, West

Day two, Staycation.

Destination: Tacoma and points west. We got a late start on the day and decided to postpone our trip south until tomorrow.

Documents related to the Titanic.

First stop: Karpeles Manuscript Museum Library. We have lived in the area for over thirty years and didn't know this place existed. This museum has original documents that are shared across a network of seven other museums across the country. Today's exhibit highlighted documents related to the War of 1812. It was a housed in a large building which was very dusty and dirty. It was quirky and odd, perhaps a treasure in the rough. We will probably go back when they change the exhibition.

Second stop: The Red Hot tavern for lunch (not weird) but what I chose to eat was weird. A hot dog called:

THE HOUND DOG

4.75

Sweet creamy peanut butter and 2 slices of crispy bacon. Trust us on this…

Yes. It was a hot dog with peanut butter and bacon. Yum!

Third Stop: Bob's Java Jive, a dive bar famous because it is in the shape of a teapot. We couldn't go in because it doesn't open until 8 PM nightly.

Highlights of Staycation, Day 1, North

Because my husband and I are stuck at home this year for Spring Break we decided to take a series of day trips to investigate the weird curiosities Western Washington has to offer. Yesterday we mapped out a full day of adventures which took us north of our home in Puyallup.

First stop, Greenwood Memorial Park in Renton to see
the final resting place of Jimi Hendrix

After his death in 1970, guitar legend Jimi Hendrix was buried in an obscure, simple plot. A few years ago, his remains were exhumed and relocated to to this large memorial his family built on the cemetery grounds with access from the street and room for the many fans who visit to park.

If you look really closely you can see lipstick marks on Jimi Hendrix' cheeks left by admiring fans.

At this point I cued up my phone to play music appropriate for the day on Pandora Radio.

First song: Voodoo Child by Jimi Hendrix

Next stop: Fremont area of Seattle, via the I-90 floating bridge.

Rocket

We parked near this circa 1950s Cold War rocket which was moved in the 1990s to become a landmark in the Fremont area of Seattle. At one time people could insert a few coins to make steam appear, making it seem like the rocket was ready for blast-off. A sign nearby says that it is tipped just a bit so that it's trajectory aims at Seattle City Hall.

Waiting for the Interurban

Created in the 1979, this Richard Beyer sculpture grouping is named Waiting for the Interurban and it is a favorite spot to decorate and personalize. As you see in the photo above, we (temporarily) added an Oregon Ducks jacket to a gentleman waiting for the bus.

Vladimir Lenin Statue

Moved to Seattle in the 1990s.  A teacher found it on a scrap heap in Czechoslovakia and paid to have it moved here. Lenin often gets decorated, painted, or dressed up. This has to be one of the weirdest and most unexpected sights in the city.

Fremont Troll, under the Aurora Bridge

The troll, made of steel re-bar, wire, and concrete is clutching an actual VW Bug which you can barely see in this shot. We hit a crease when one group of tourists were leaving and before another group arrived so no one is crawling on the troll at this moment.

JP Patches, the clown of early local TV fame



JP Patches was the host of a popular kid's show in the early years of local Seattle television. We saw this sculpture as we were leaving the Fremont District. Don parked illegally and jumped out of the car to get these shots.

Since we were walking around to see the sights in Fremont we didn't have any theme music playing.

Next stop: The Panama Hotel

Made famous by the book, On the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford.

The Panama Hotel still houses items left behind by families who were rounded up in the Japanese Internment following the bombing of Pearl Harbor in WWII. We drank a pot of tea and ate shortbread and sesame seed cookies while listening to music of the era on 78 speed records, played on an old record player.

The Panama Hotel tea room wasn't quite what I expected but it was fun to feel like we were stepping back in time and learning about the city's past at the same time. In the photo above Don is looking through a glass panel to the items left behind by Japanese-Americans as they were being sent away. Many never came back for their things when the war was over.

Back in the car. Cue the music to the 1940s big band sound. First song, "In the Mood" by Glen Miller.

Last stop: The Hat and Boots, now located in Oxbow Park in south Seattle (moved here in 2003.) They were once part of a gas station and an obvious roadside attraction. The hat was the office and boots were the restrooms.

The weather held most of the day only sprinkling on us for a few minutes at the Troll. Here, our last stop of the day, the sun broke through the clouds and we had a glorious few minutes alone in the small neighborhood park with a huge hat and pair of boots.

On our way home we listened to Western Swing music. First song, "Bob Wills is Still the King" by Asleep at the Wheel. Plenty of slide guitar and fiddling to fill the car as we drove home.

Today: we head south: Mima Mounds, Black houses of Olympia, and Tiffany chandeliers.