More Anacortes - Cathy's place

Anacortes has all sorts of surprises.  This quirky little park was someone's labour of love

A beautiful, long multi-use trestle crossing Fidalgo Bay.

Cathy enjoying the beer and the Tom Petty cover band.  

Cathy lives on Guemes Island, a 5 min ferry ride from Anacortes.  Despite it's proximity to town it's another world there.

Michael gave me a little tour of the island while Cathy and friend made breakfast.  

A sweet little island, peaceful and laid back as these little islands usually are.  And Cathy has a sweet little home there with artistic surprises everywhere, inside and out.  

 It was a fun weekend and I hope to go back again next year. 

Anacortes Art and Friends

This summer I got a notice of an arts festival in Anacortes, Washington from my friend, Cathy Schoenberg, who is an artist living near Anacortes,  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anacortes,_Washington.  I met Cathy's partner, Michael, also and artist,  many years ago in Mexico and we've seen each other there over successive years and have maintained a friendship since.

The different faces of Anacortes

 Mt Baker - the beautiful

 Shell oil refinery - the ugly

A marine setting

The arts festival is a really big deal in Anacortes.  As the publicity blurb puts it:  "The more than 80,000 festival goers enjoy 280 booth artisans, 3 stages of continuous free entertainment, fine art show, youth activities, food booths & trucks, beer & wine gardens, demonstration artists, a 5K run and collaborative art projects."  As a testimony to her art and her reputation, Cathy was invited to exhibit in the juried show where she had several pieces.  In any case, I thought it would be fun to go over there for the festival and it was a trip I could do by bike.  So I packed my panniers and rode to the ferry in Sidney for the crossing to Anacortes.  

Both Michael and Cathy have studios in a former office building in the old downtown of Anacortes and Cathy graciously made hers available to me for a place to crash.  It was lovely sleeping surrounded by her beautiful paintings.  

 Cathy's colouring books

Art in the hallway

Michael in his studio

More Anacortes to come

Seattle June 2019 cont.

I have a long history with Seattle.  I lived there for a time in the 60s on my way to Canada and in the mid 70s we moved there as a family so I've gotten to know the city to a degree and have seen it grow and change over a few decades.  
Slow to adopt rapid transit, Seattle now has a nice light rail system that is being expanded on, a pretty good bus system and lots of share bikes, mostly electric. 

On the train

 Underground train station

One of the major tourist attractions in Seattle is the Underground Tour.  In all the years that I lived in Seattle I never did it so it was good to finally get the opportunity.  For a variety of reasons I won't go into here, the old town part of Seattle (Pioneer Square) is built on top of what was originally the downtown and now you can go down into the original city.  

 Wooden pipe

End of an era, the destruction of the Alaskan Way Viaduct, a two level freeway that dominated Seattle's waterfront for decades.

Views around town

A visit to Seattle would not be complete without a shot of Mt Rainier should it be visible.

 And off into the sunset!

Seattle June 2019

In June of this year shortly after I got back from Mexico I went to Seattle to connect with the family and celebrate me and Lucien's birthdays.  He and his mom came and so did Lily so we had all the immediate family together with the exception of Ryan who had to work.  I learned that a visit to the space needle was at the top of Lucien's list of wishes for his birthday in Seattle so I booked at visit there for the two of us.  Unfortunately it was a cloudy, drizzly day but still, it was a fun trip and the views were pretty spectacular.  

What a great perspective for viewing Seattle from way up there 184m (603') high.  

Looking down into Seattle Center - Chihuly glass

 Frank Gehry architecture

Stay tuned for more Seattle 2019