GLASSY EYED

After the Hoh Rainforest, we continued our counterclockwise circling of Olympic Park/Forest.  101 goes by the ocean for a ways so we stopped to visit Ruby Beach.  There were supposed to be small stones on the beach that look like faux rubies – really garnets – but we didn’t see any of those.  Instead, what we got was an impressive set of sea stacks on a very rough looking beach.

There’s a river that comes out right here, so between that and the sea there are zillions of “river rocks,” smooth-worn stones about a flat hand size.  Hmmm.  Pretty colors and patterns.  Just right for adding to some front yard landscaping.  The beach is now short six.

Further down the coast, there’s a lodge at Queets consisting of about fifty cabin units that front another beach, this one consisting of thousands of ocean-and-river spewn (I made that word up) logs.  There were warning signs cautioning that the rubble was very unstable, and people had been crushed to death while climbing around on them.  We were content with the long view.

We came inland after this, to start skirting the southern side of the Park.  Down in this corner is Lake Quinault which was supposed to have a neat namesake lodge on its shore.  This proved to be a very scenic lake, and the lodge was a stunner.  It was built in the 1920’s and visited by FDR in the 30’s.  They named the dining room after him.  This is a shot of the front.  They were putting a new roof on, and you can see some blue tarp and bare boards where they were working.

  

Inside, the lobby was, for me, the quintessential lodge, with dark wood, big fireplace, and lots of overstuffed leather seats.  I’d stay here in a heartbeat.

The back of the lodge looks out over a great lawn down to the lake.   

On the first floor of the rear of the left wing was the restaurant where we had lunch, looking out on the scene above.  I’ll spare you more food photos, but we had excellent Monte Cristo (me) and croissant chicken salad (Loni) sandwiches, with sweet potato fries.  And, yes, another superlative.  Perhaps the best berry cobbler ever! 

On the back porch they had the lodge’s rain gauge, which shows the year-to-date total.  Way up top you can see a mark for the record annual drenching of some fifteen feet !  The mark for this year, thus far, is at eleven.

We ended up for the night in Tumwater at a park whose nicest feature was a cheap laundry.  The sack was overflowing, so Loni did the duds alongside another woman who poured out her rather heartrending life story.  Gads.  You need a wakeup like that once in a while to remind you how good you have it.  I, of course, was watching Texas cream the Yankees.  Yes!  I keep thinking Tumwater was the home of the old Hamm’s Brewery, so the darn theme song keeps running through my head.  “FROM the land of sky blue waters, COMES the beer refreshing, HAMM”S the beer refreshing, Hammmmm’s (drums) da da da dum!”  God, senility is wonderful.

Tumwater was just a staging for our visit to the Museum of Glass in nearby Tacoma.  We both got “into” glass art when we visited a museum in Oklahoma City that featured the work of Dale Chihuly (sp?  I don’t have internet as I type this).  Wild, fabulous stuff that I blogged about at the time.  It has begun to rain in earnest, so spending the day indoors is a good call.  We used Dora, our GPS, to guide us in, as Tacoma ranks behind only Houston in our rogues gallery tangled roads.  The maps we have (and we have several) still didn’t provide coherent detail.   Dora was doing just fine until we exited the freeway and the street we were supposed to follow was blockaded, and appeared to have been so for many years.  So much for map updates.  Fortunately, we could see where we needed to go, as the distinctive conical roof was jutting up in the distance.  We actually ended up literally on the other side of the tracks from the museum, at the Washington State History Museum.  I had Google-Earthed the area the night before, looking for open lots that we could park Albatross in (yeah, I know, dangling participle).  The History Museum seemed to have one, and sure enough it did.  We took up two spaces, encroached on two others, paid for one at the kiosk, and ran for it.

The History Museum is connected to the Glass Museum by the Bridge of Glass over the (active) railroad yard.

Ahead of Loni there is an area where the ceiling is made out of Chihuly pieces, very like an exhibit we saw in Oklahoma.

 

The sidewalls of the bridge in that area are display cases housing some beautiful pieces.  I guess the covering plexiglass is theft-proof, because it was clear that these objects stayed here permanently and were not taken in each night.  The actual wall of these things stretched about fifty feet and was nine feet high, so this photo is only a small portion of the display.

The museum doesn’t allow any photography inside, except for the “Hot Shop,” where they had amphitheater seating facing a working glass shop where visiting “fellows” are free to use the facilities and the permanent skilled crew to fabricate their designs.  It was fascinating to watch.  The current artist in residence is the woman on the left in the shot below.  The others are the museum’s artisan staff that executes the designs under the artist’s direction.

I think she’s praying the thing won’t blow up.  The process is a real teamwork effort.  It appeared that the craftsmen had worked together for many years, as they all worked on the one piece in sequential tasks that would do credit to a choreographer.  That blob on the end of the stick is molten glass.  They roll the pole along those two supports to keep it in shape. 

 

It’s too bad we couldn’t take pics, because one of the exhibits was hilarious.  Third and fourth graders from local schools got to draw whatever fanciful creature they wanted, in full color.  Then the artists (including world-renown visitors from around the world) and the staff craftsmen executed the kids’ designs in glass, with the kids present when their design was being made, for consultation.  Linkletter had it right when he said, “Kids say the darndest things.”  They also come up with some pretty wild critters, like the Pizza Cat, the Lemon Mouse, weird birds, monsters, you name it.  The executions were very faithful to the kids’ drawings, and were a gas.  In another gallery we saw an installation that had just opened that day.  It’s hard to describe, but it consisted of a forest of glass pieces (panels, puffs, objects, etc.) hanging from the ceiling by thin wires.  The pieces were layered one in front of the other to create a feeling of depth as you looked from the front.  The whole thing created a forest scene, with trees, mountains, a waterfall, etc.  It’s one of those things you just have to see to appreciate, and we were blown away, and couldn’t stop grinning at our good fortune to be have scheduled our visit by accident on opening day.

We had a great time, learned a lot, and had more than a few chuckles.  Another absolute must-see museum, unlike anything you’ll find elsewhere.