Tag Archives: Mount Rainier

Sunless in Seattle

Posted by dkrashb on

I love flying over Seattle.  There’s almost always clouds below the plane, blanketing the sky.  Then, suddenly, the peak of a mountain pops through like a giant whitehead.  Only an attractive one.  Mt Rainier particularly stands out.  Perhaps because it’s so rarely been visible from the ground on any of my trips to the area.

These photos are from the first time I went to Seattle, which wasn’t until 2004.  We went to visit some friends who had moved out there from Columbus.  We spent most of our time North of Seattle, but we decided to spend the last day of our trip downtown, exploring the city.

The Experience Music Project and Space Needle were two of the sites on our “must see” list.  Since they were co-located, it was pretty easy to work them both into our schedule.  As luck would have it, we had beautiful blue skies and sunshine that entire trip until the day we went into downtown Seattle.  I don’t know if this is because there is some sort of vortex over Seattle and causes it to be cloudy and rainy there all the time or if the maximum number of sunny days had been reached and the clouds were turned back on.

As we approached the EMP Museum, it looked mostly like a sheen of gray against a gray sky, drenched in gray mist.  We were happy to go inside.

Seeing the collections of guitars was pretty exciting to my husband.  A little less so to me.  But, the tornado of guitars was pretty impressive.  In truth, there could have been absolutely nothing inside that building and I could have spent the entire day trying to figure out how to shoot its strange curves and intersecting angles.  Armed only with my PowerShot G3 at the time, I struggled with the lighting conditions for starters.  But more than that, trying to find a logical edge to decide on what to include and exclude from the frame seemed impossible as each shape flowed into the next.  Each attempt at framing a shot seemed like I was cutting off the flow.  Most of my shots are not even interesting enough to include with this post.

After exploring the interactive exhibits in the EMP, we made our way over to the Space Needle.  In spite of he rain, the view was pretty impressive.  We looked straight down on the EMP and got to look at the shape of tis exterior.  We also got a clearer view of how colorful the exterior really is.

The Space Needle also afforded some great looks at the ports below.  Down in the park below, a group of kids were playing with giant water canons permanently mounted there.  I found it amusing that they were squirting each other with water while it was raining.

By the time we’d stood out on the observation deck for 10 minutes, we were both looking like drowned rats.

Scenic View

Posted by dkrashb on

One of the more sedate things I enjoy is riding in trains.  Whether it’s as transportation or a scenic route (or, better yet, both), I really enjoy knowing that no one (who isn’t getting paid to be there) gets stuck doing the driving.

When we saw a PBS documentary on scenic train rides with steam engines, I made note of the Mt. Rainier Scenic Railroad.  I had yet to make it to Mt. Rainier and taking a train ride there sounded like the perfect way to enjoy seeing Mt. Rainier with my father and his wife on our next visit to Portland.

Many weeks later when Pat and I were out on our annual visit, the four of us headed out of Portland towards Elbe, Washington early in the morning.

A little too early, in fact.

When we arrived in the “town” of Elbe, no one seemed to be up yet.  Fortunately, one of the 3 businesses at the only intersection was a quiet restaurant where we got a good, down-home breakfast.

After filling our bellies, we headed out and discovered the volunteers who run the train had arrived.  I guess if you are excited by steam engines, this would be a great event.  However, once we were on the train, we discovered two things:  first, you really can’t see the engine when you’re in the train; second, you really can’t see much of anything when you’re in the train.

There were 2 moments totally 18 seconds during the ride where we could see beyond the immediate vegetation surrounding the tracks.  During 11 of those seconds, we saw Mt. Rainier off in the distance (2nd photo).  The rest of the time, we saw scenery like the dense trees and ferns in the 3rd photo or an occasional flower-covered slope like the 4th photo.

While I enjoy hiking in the woods, they’re tough to appreciate from a train.  Besides, this was supposed to be the “Mt. Rainier Scenic Railway.”  Call me crazy, but I expected to see Mt. Rainier for more than 11 seconds.

I suppose it’s all about expectations.  Had it been called “Get-a-Glimpse-of-Mt.-Rainier-During-an-Hour-and-a-Half-Train-Ride-Through-Dense-Woods Railway,” I probably would have been thrilled.

Fortunately, we were returned to the station with plenty of time to drive to Mt. Rainier National Park.  We got spectacular views just driving up to the visitor’s center and made plenty of stops so our driver (aka, Dad) could also enjoy the view.  Photos 5-13 were all taken from within the park.  It wasn’t the best time of day for good light, but the area was so beautiful, I didn’t really care.

The final image is of Tisen, taken with my iPhone using the Hipstomatic app.  I love the irony of having an app on a smart phone so you can take pictures that look like you took them with a cheap camera from the 1960’s.  It’s awesome.