Jason and Harrigan Visit

My brother Jason and sister in-law Harrigan came out for an extended weekend visit. I would say they managed to cram in the full Seattle experience in that weekend. 

The Bowmans

All of us.

Picnic on the beach.

Brothers.

At Gasworks Park.

Random cool artwork.

Jason and Harrigan

We were all over the map, experiencing samples of the things that make Seattle…Seattle. Such as:

‘Green’ Living

We stopped by Seattle Tilth’s Harvest Fair which is where a lot like minded people converge to share/educate/and benefit from: urban farming, composting, green building, organic produce, CSAs,   pesticide-free zones, urban beekeeping, collaborative consumption, and locavorism. You know… the kind of common sense things that we would all get behind, if wasn't for the looming fear of being labeled a hippie.  Luckily for us all, there is more contemporary term: ‘Granola’ – has the values of hippie but with the amenities and financial means of the average, modern, middle-class, family. This was definitely a Granola-lifestyle type of event, although a few hippies and yuppies may have infiltrated.  :)

Art

We saw Samsara, a film for which I have been waiting to be finalized, for years. It is a fantastic look at the contrast of how fascinating and bizarre civilization/society is. I absolutely recommend it to everyone.  I think it is a bit edgier than Ron Fricke's previous work (which is all also spectacular).

We checked out were the Seattle Art Museum (SAM) and the Olympic Sculpture Park. Both have been on my to-see list and each had some very interesting pieces.

Inopportune: Stage One by Cai Guo-Qiang. He directed the visual and special effects for the opening ceremony of the 2008 Beijing Olympics! 

I really like these masks.

"We all wear masks, metaphorically speaking."

The Porcelain Room of SAM

Split by Roxy Paine. 2003.  Stainless Steel 

Eagle by Alexander Calder. 1971

Unfortunately, Jason and Harrigan had already seen several of the installations before, either in Central Park (in the case of the sculpture), or in some museum called the “Guggenheim”. Maybe you have heard of it, but frankly…it sounds made up. So if we can’t impress them with Seattle’s art scene, maybe we can appeal to some other interests that Seattle is better known for:  food, coffee, and music!

Food

Jason and Harrigan are what you might call ‘Foodies’, so we directed some time into eating a lot of delicious food. When I say delicious, I mean DELICIOUS. The places we ate spanned many neighborhoods and cuisines, but had one common theme… it was all really stellar food. But don't take my word for it, ask Yelp!

Some of the places we ate included Paseo, Bitterroot BBQ, Honore Artisan Bakery, Pike Place Chowder, Beechers Handmade Cheese ,and OddFellows Cafe. When we weren’t dining out, we were cooking up our own dishes: several fantastic breakfasts and one evening we bought mussels and cooked them down at the beach! Gourmet even at the beach!

Coffee

We did our fair share of consuming coffee throughout the weekend as well. Not that we necessary were seeking out great coffee, but great coffee kind of finds you in Seattle. Some of the coffee shops we sampled included Caffé Fiore, Honore, Fonte, Chocolati, and of course Starbucks! [wow, what a pretentious sounding list of coffee shop names... but they can back it up].    : )

Music

A band we know from Blacksburg, Wild Nothing, who subsequently have made it big in the indie music world, was touring through Seattle, so we all went to check it out. It was fun evening, and a good show, but I wouldn’t call it a great show…. The keyboardist had a recently broken arm, along with a few technical snafus, contributed to a lack-luster performance. But a fun night, none-the-less.

Wild Nothing

Throughout the visit, all four of us took pictures using the photo sharing app Instagram.  Some of us took more pictures than others and some of us might have an addiction to Instagram…but it paid off.  In an attempt at an experiment in modern technology and social media, I have combined all of the pictures we took into a collage. They are without description or context, and there is no rhyme or reason to the organization to the pictures.  Just 270(!) pics, documenting all of the things we did, the food we ate, and what we collectively experienced. Enjoy!

Another fantastic bunch of visitors! Who is next?!




[Photos courtesy of Harrigan, Jason, and Tess. I would also give some credit to Instagram!]

John and Sarah Visit

Every year Dave Mathews Band plays a 3-day concert at The Gorge Amphitheatre over Labor Day weekend. This annual performance has become the Mecca for Dave Mathews Band fans. Our friends Sarah and John, made the pilgrimage out to Washington for the show (and to visit us!) and treated us to an evening at the absolutely gorgeous Gorge amphitheater. While many fans make it a full weekend event, complete with camping, we only caught the Saturday night show, opened by The Avett Brothers.

At the show

The Gorge Amphitheatre

Dave Mathews Band

It was a fun weekend of doing things around the city including: hanging out at the beach of Golden Gardens Park, going up the Space Needle, venturing into the International District, going to the Asian supermarket Uwajimaya, checking out the Pioneer Square Neighborhood, seeing the Ballard Locks, taking the ferry to Bainbridge Island, and having a fantastic meal at Hitchcock.

At the beach.

Sights and artwork from around the International District and Pioneer Square

Pioneer Square

Ballard Locks 

This very clever sea lion was swimming circles around the entrance to the fish ladder, treating himself to the all-you-can-eat salmon buffet.

A portion of the fish ladder to help the salmon bypass the locks.

After the fish ladder, the salmon swim through this genius viewing area. Cool!

Kayaks entering the locks.

Old friends and Space Age architecture.

The Huddles with a view of Seattle from 600 feet up.

Us as part of the Seattle skyline.

 The weekend proved to be another wonderful, action-packed adventure with friends!


[Photos courtesy of John Huddle and Tess]

The 35th Annual Lemay Car Show

Many, many fully-restored, shiny, machines. TOO shiny in fact... and difficult to photograph.

A couple of friends from Virginia, Janet and Pat Monroe, have been traveling out to volunteer at the Lemay Car Show in Tacoma, Washington since 1996, so we thought we would stop in and check it out. And we were pleasantly surprised!  Not only was it great to hang out with Janet and Pat for a few hours, but we saw some pretty nifty things. We took the abridged, whirlwind tour of the collections. It would probably take years to fully take it all in.

There are so many cars, they are literally stacked on top of each other!

Tess in front of this years featured car: the extremely rare 1948 Tucker

Pat, Janet, and us.

Pat working hard... or hardly working?    : )

The Lemay Car Show, although it has its fair share of cars, is more than just a car show. It truly is a collection of collections: cars, motorcycles, bike, antiques, toys, and many other random items. It was collected by the family of Harold LeMay, and has grown and kind of split into a separate entity which runs the very recently opened America's Car Museum. 

I think our favorite group was the teardrop trailers. Tess has been trying to convince me to agree to help her build one, and seeing them in person might have assured that one of these awesome little trailers is in our future.  It would be a fun (although intense) project.

Two different, but equally awesome teardrop trailers.

I also really liked this collection of brass hose fittings. Maybe it is just the fact that there are so many different hose fittings that all to do the same thing… or that someone thought to collect them… but I thought this display case was cool.

A lot of brass hose fittings. A LOT.

The event is partially held on the grounds of an old military school purchased by the family, where they house the long-distance volunteers throughout the event. Since Janet and Pat have been volunteering at the show since 1996, and travel so far, they get the ‘master bed and bath’, which are pretty nice accommodations for FREE! In addition to giving us the inside scoop on everything, and pretty much giving us a personal guided tour, they gave us the VIP tour of the grounds.

We were quite lucky to see so much, and get the extended experience on our first visit! It is amazing how much knowledge of this collection they have acquired, and it was quite cool to have them share so much history and so many facts with us throughout the day.

The EMP Museum

The EMP Museum           [photo courtesy of Wikipedia]

We finally made it to the EMP Museum (formally known as the Experience Music Project) which was founded by Paul Allen (of Microsoft money).  The EMP is part museum and part interactive funland. It is a Mecca for music lovers and Sci-Fi geeks alike. The building itself is as architecturally interesting on the outside, as the content is on the inside.

Gigantic sculpture of musical instruments in the middle of the museum.

Current exhibits include Nirvana and the Seattle Grunge scene, Jimi Hendrix, AC/DC, photos of The Rolling Stones, a guitar gallery, Avatar, horror films, and Sci-Fi artifacts.

I really enjoyed the Nirvana exhibit as a look into the musicians lives and Seattle as a music scene as well as the epicenter of music for a brief moment in time. The horror films showcase was really cool too and gave me an appreciation for horror films that I previously did not have.

It was cool to see all these music, Sci-Fi, and horror artifacts.

There was a scream booth where you make your best bloodcurdling scream.

This was an interactive display based on the movie Avatar, where you literally controlled an avatar. The computer calibrated to you, and then it mimicked whatever you did, in a computer simulation of Pandora. Pretty nifty. Watch until the end when I touch the plants and make them retract, just like in the movie! Don't worry, I won't quite my day job to pursue an acting career....

To summarize... the EMP is cool.

The Boths and the Rowlands Visit

We recently had a whole crew of visitors, which is fantastic because we love to host! It was an action packed week in which we got out and did many of the things we have been talking about doing.

The whole crew and a sunset on the ferry.

To start off, we took a ferry over to Orcas Island, which is one of the hundreds of beautiful San Juan Islands.

For geographic reference.

We camped for a few nights and occupied our time during the days by hiking to the top of Mt.Constitution for some absurdly picturesque views and swimming in aptly named and refreshingly pristine Mountain Lake. 

On the hike.

Tess found a cool panoramic feature on her phone and we took this picture of the amazing view featuring myself (thrice).

One night we had to chase away a campsite invader, which luckily turned out to not be a huge bear, but instead a little deer who has become accustomed to ransacking campsites. It was making quite a ruckus by eating our tortilla chips, so I yelled at it, called it names, threw things at it, and hit it straight between the eyes with Tess’ flip-flop, so it finally decided to wander off slowly to raid the neighbors camp.

The next morning we grabbed a delicious brunch at Doe Bay Cafe and then drove across the island to hopped on a whale watching boat. The deal with whale watching is that it is whale searching…and if you get lucky, you may see a whale, otherwise it is an expensive boat excursion. We did stalk a Minke whale for a while and saw it surface several times, which was cool, as well as saw various other wildlife including porpoises, eagles, and many of the beautiful islands that make up the San Juan archipelago, so it turned out pretty good (although a sighting of one the Orcas of the local pods would have been nice).

Minke whale  (this is kind of what whale watching looks like) [photo courtesy of Andi]

Arlo is a zen child.

This is what Ezra thinks of Seattle's playgrounds.

Us and the Space Needle

Our visitors spent the week seeing what Seattle has going on and checking out many of the cool museums and attractions. Tess joined them for a trip to Woodland Park Zoo and we both tagged along for a trip to the Experience Music Project (a post soon to come). One evening we treated ourselves to fine dining at The Walrus and the Carpenter for some amazing oysters and seafood. The food was beyond spectacular. All in all it was a whirlwind, action-packed, fantastic week. I wish we could do it all over again!

Me and the empty oyster shells.