A Day in Seattle

We drove south from Port Townsend about 50 miles to Bainbridge Island and walked onto the ferry to Seattle. From Seattle, Mount Rainier is very ghostly and prominent and only about 60 miles away.

The first hotel in Seattle was opened in 1856 by Madame Damnable. She ran a high-class hotel of ill repute but earned her nickname, not from that, but from her ability to swear proficiently in Chinese, English, French, German, Portuguese, and Spanish. Her name was Mary Ann Conklin. Prior to moving to Seattle, she was abandoned in Port Townsend by her hubby, "Bull" Conklin, who was a whaling ship Captain.

The last time we saw Seattle was 1968. We had a favorite Italian restaurant called Ferlinghetti's. It always took about two hours to get though the many dinner courses. Sometimes we even missed our theater ticket showtimes. We discussed the restaurant on the bus yesterday with some long time Seattle residents. They told us Ferlinghetti's. had gone out of business decades back.

The Space Needle and monorail were built for the 1962 Seattle World's Fair. Both of these and the old Food Court were still there, but several other attractions have been built since we were last here to supplement an area now called the "Seattle Center". There is a Science Fiction Museum and a Music Appreciation center currently featuring "Nirvana" to name two new enhancements to the sleazy old World's Fair location. At a top speed of 45 MPH the Seattle monorail is thought to be the  fastest monorail in the world. Each of the trains has logged over a million miles on the one mile track. Back in the 60s we all thought monorails were the tits.

We went to a really run down area of the city in 1967 to see three short plays by Leroy Jones. All of the actors and the audience were black except for me and Mrs. Phred. One scene required anger and frustration from a black man wearing a hard hat. He took it off and threw it really hard and hit me in the chest with it. I was really impressed with his aim and it left me with a cool indelible memory. Did I tell you Mrs. Phred was thrown in jail in 1964 for protesting the Florida pavilion at the New York World's Fair and Florida's racial policies?

Sometimes the things you see in city store windows are as interesting as what you can see in a big city art museum.

We had lunch at a micro brewery on the waterfront and then spent a couple of hours in SAM (Seattle Art Museum).

I took a few pictures. Works in glass are always appealing.

It's interesting to go around to art museums in different big cities and see how much the directors are willing to put on the line in the way of unconventional modern art vs. the tried and true. Seattle's SAM  was packed with stolid stuff.

North to Alaska

Ephrata, Washington

Tomorrow we catch a JetBlue flight out of Seattle for 11 days in Alaska. We have packed one carry on suitcase and one backpack with clothes, fish pole, toiletries, cameras, phones, chest waders, a spinning reel, lures and a fish net....

We're meeting my cousins, Sue and Danny Robinson, and their spouses. Les and Doris to explore Homer, Soldatna, Seward, Talkeetna  and Denali National Park. Mrs. Phed, Danny and Doris are taking a bear flight over Cook's inlet to a remote lake one day, while Les, Sue and myself angle for sockeye in the Kenai River.. We're doing the 14 hour bus ride into Denali and an eight hour boat ride on Prince William Sound out od Seward.

 We've been a lot of places lately without a blog. Flathead Lake, Coeur D'Alene, Spokane and Ephrata, Washington. No blogs in Alaska. I'm packing too lightly for the Notebook or Ipad....In fact, this is blog number 998 over the last ten years....I'm thinking seriously about retiring for good when I hit 1,000.

The picture above is Spokane Falls near the site of the 1974 Spokane World's Fair. The one below is from a 5AM walk up the Going-to-the Sun road in Glacier National Park.