There's a place where you can get some great scenics of The Emerald City. I've always know there was this 'place' but I've never been there. I didn't even know where it was.
Thinking about that the other day, I idly started scrolling through Google Maps to where I thought it might be. I knew it was around the old Amazon Headquarters and so it was just a matter of getting off my Rusty Dusty and figuring out where.
And I did.
Hoozah!! Love the 'Net!!
I really do.
And so, armed with an address and my Garmin, we set off on a new, early-morning (sort of) adventure!!
We arrived at the Jose Rizal Park at 0905 . . . Oh, yeah, that's early, on a drizzly, overcast day. In other words, a pretty typical Seattle day.
Hahahaha, I grouse a lot about the overcast and cloudy skies but, honestly, there've been a lot of days with clear and bright blue skies this past year. A lot. I suppose I could have waited until the weather was better to visit this place but, well, patience and good sense are not my fortes. As most of my friends and family are keenly aware of.
Hahahaha, honestly, I had wanted to be there when the sun crested the eastern skies but who are we kidding? I'm not that ambitious. So there we were standing on the ridge overlooking our city and shivering just a bit from the cold at a little past nine.
Seattle Skyline Super Selfie!!
Seattle Skyline Super Selfie!!
Dr. Jose Rizal Park is a 9.6 acre park on the west slope of Beacon Hill. The land, condemned by the city in 1917 for engineering purposes (that would explain the obvious lack of any buildings), was acquired by the Parks Department in 1971 and the park was dedicated eight years later. The park is named after Jose Rizal, a national hero of the Philippines. Evidently we lack a sufficient number of U.S. heroes to be honored.
The park is bounded on the west by I-5, on the north by I-90, on the east by 12th Avenue S., and on the south by Judkins Street. The park consists of a grassy upper area with shelter and picnic tables, a wooded hillside and an off-leash dog park at the foot of the hill.
It's a nice park with a nice little covered picnic area It has a trail leading down the hill to the Mountains to Sound Greenway Trail.
The Mountains to Sound Greenway Trail covers about 1.5 million acres. The Greenway as it is today was first envisioned in 1990, when a group of citizens hiked from the Cascade Crest alongside I-90, through the forest all the way. The Seattle region was on the verge of a significant economic boom and unchecked sprawl threatened much of the region. In 1991, the Mountains to Sound Greenway Trust was founded to work toward a shared vision of keeping some of these natural lands within a connected, multi-purpose Greenway between Seattle and Central Washington.
Cool.
Eventually we got to the reason for the visit and that was getting some shots of The Emerald City. Again, these are presented in the random order in which I took them. There's no real rhyme or reason to my photography . . . I see and I shoot.
And I saw a ferry!! And I shot same.
Hahahaha, I am a simple soul.
But, look!! There's the Glass Box!! You've seen it before when we've gone to a SeaHawks game. Oddly enough, I hadn't even noticed it when I was at Rizel Park. I just noticed it when I was editing the pictures. Shows what a reflection will do.
We'll be looking west and north for most of these pictures with Elliott Bay and the Puget Sound out there somewhere.
Look!! There's CenturyLink Field, Home of the Super Bowl Champion Seattle SeaHawks. And, oh, yeah, the Mariners play on the field next to them.
As you look down in the foreground, you can see where the park dips down towards I-5 and the Mountains to Sound Greenway Trail.
Whup!! There it is!! The park overlooks, to the north, where I-90 pretty much ends, or begins depending on your view of life, at I-5. That's I-5 curving away on the right side of the picture.
Oh, look!! There's CenturyLink Field, Home of the Super Bowl Champion Seattle SeaHawks. And where the 'Hawks will defeat a as-yet-to-be-determined team in a week on the road to Super Bowl XLIX.
Round these parts, the word is, the road to the Super Bowl has to go through Seattle.
Hahahahaha. I've never been associated with a winning football team. This is a novel, and fun, experience.
You might be saying, Gosh, didn't I just see this picture? And the answer is, NO!!
I winnowed down ALL the pictures of The Emerald City to just the few I'm showing you now. Each of them are intrinsically different and subtly special in their own way.
That's my story and I'm sticking to it.
A close up of the I-5 curve into The Emerald City. The yellowish building to the right foreground is the Pacific Rim Center . . . Located in Seattle's International District , the Pacific Rim Center is the largest indoor mall in the area. Fifty luxury condominiums are located on the upper floors of the building.
Hmmmmm, maybe Carol and I will stop by and see what all the fuss is about there. We'll see.
A closer view of a previously seen scene. (Hahahaha, love the English language!! They're, their, there and on and on . . . )
There's my favorite tower in Seattle, the Smith Tower. To the right of that is the old City Hall and there, in the back, is the round dome that we think gives rise to the name, The Emerald City.
It was a Saturday at the end of the Holidays and so the traffic was actually moving. Normally this is most definitely not the case. Normally it looks like a parking lot.
No rhyme or reason . . . They just put 'em up and let everyone else sort them out.
Just a random shot . . . a semi artsy-fartsy shot. Something to play with in the future . . . taking pictures of birds on a wire, that is.
This, this one is Post Card Quality. It's my favorite from today.
There's The Emerald City with the Glass Box and CenturyLink Field, Home of the Super Bowl Champion Seattle SeaHawks.
Hahaha, there's only so many ways to present the same subject so I went all artsy-fartsy and tried a shot with the trees and bushes framing the city.
There was hardly any traffic on 12th Avenue. We were walking over to the Pacific Tower and I got this shot.
Not a lot of flowers these days but I did get these seed pods from a rhododendrun.
Bright little buggers, aren't they.
Here's 12th Avenue as it crosses over the I-90.
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
'Tis some visitor,' I muttered, 'tapping at my chamber door -
Only this, and nothing more.'
Hahahaha, I always think of that poem whenever I shoot a raven/crow/rook/magpie/jackdaw or, as I call them, Feathered Rats.
Fun Facts: Crows will crush an ant and rub it all over themselves like perfume. The Formic Acid in the ant helps ward off parasites.
Pet crows give their owners names. This is identified by the unique sound they make around specific people that they wouldn't normally make.
Female crows mate for life, but males will cheat.
Male crows have no penis. Their sperm is transferred from their cloaca to the female cloaca and copulation only lasts 15 seconds. You have to wonder why the females are so loyal, don't you.
Crows have been observed chasing sparrows into buildings in order to stun them. The result is sparrow for lunch. But crows will also pick on birds their own size - mobbing crows can seriously injure hawks. Scientists suspect an eagle was even killed by mobbing crows.
Wha . . . !?!?!
The I-5, uncharacteristically free of traffic. Honest, try driving this same road at the same time on a weekday and you're in for some major frustration . . . and stop-and-go traffic.
We could even see the Olympics, in the distance across the Sound. The sun was finally peeking out a bit.
Love. The. Zoom.
Maybe someday I'll even use a tripod for these super-long shots.
Maybe.
We're on the other side of the street and I got a shot of the Mini. Fun story, there was a guy sleeping in the van next to us when we pulled up. After a while he got up and went to the public restroom and then left. Later on, as we were leaving, we saw him parked on a side street on the other side of Beacon Hill. He didn't go too far.
We see this grand building whenever we travel downtown either by the freeway or on the Link. It really is an imposing sight when seen from below.
It's the Pacific Tower, formerly the Pacific Medical center. It's a 16-story building on Beacon Hill. The building is of an Art Deco style. It was completed in 1932 and opened in 1933 as a hospital for the Marines . . . no, not the Marine Corps. It replaced a facility in Port Townsend and opened with 312 beds. The hospital originally served veterans, merchant seamen, the U.S. Coast Guard, the U.S. Light House Service and poor and indigent people defined as "federal compensation cases".
It continues to function as a medical center today. Amazon.com had its headquarters at this building for several years ending its stay there in 2010.
Photo curtesy of the Internet and my meager ability to copy most anything.
It's a beautiful building but both Carol and I agreed it was more impressive from a distance than up close. Go figure.
You can definitely tell it is Art Deco.
I'm a big fan of Art Deco.
Pacific Tower Door Reflected Window Selfie!!
And to prove we have no sense of history or propriety we unabashedly used the opportunity to get us a Selfie.
Hahahaha, we're like that. Yes, we definitely are.
And while we were that close, I looked up.
They had something pretty cool with that Art Deco stuff. You can't get this today.
Que impresivo, eh?
Detail of the front side. They could really work that brick!!
Everything was planned from the retaining walls to the lamp posts . . . and all done with that Art Deco touch.
Ziemlich cool, nicht wahr!?!
I really liked the details. Look at the windows, they sorta peak out. And the window below. Carol thought they looked like some American Indian art.
The flag pole in front of the Pacific Tower.
Artsy-Fartsy Alert!!
Hahaha, it was gonna happen sooner or later.
I shot this plane coming in for a landing and just thought it an interesting picture.
Well, we enjoyed our time there and took a long and scenic ride back. But we had business to attend to before going back to the-hole-in-the-wall, so we went over to our Wells Fargo and got 'er done!! Then it was shopping to get Carol a warmer jacket.
Hahaha, what a wimp!!
(I say that as I shiver under the blanket on the couch watching football)
We finally found a jacket and then it was back down Rainier towards the Ol' Homestead and, as we drove, Carol kept a lookout for any stray eagles.
And, sure enough, we saw one. And this wasn't the first one, either. We had seen one eagle earlier when we had driven up Grady Way towards the SouthCenter Mall. Carol thinks it might have been the immature eagle but, regardless, he was far from the lake.
So we're driving down Rainier and it shouldn't be a surprise, we saw another and so I pulled over to take a gander . . . plus I had my camera with me, so . . . we saw this guy sitting way up at the top of the Eagle Tree #2.
Hahaha, I've been trying to learn how to use my camera and read, recently, that when you have a backlit subject, like this eagle with the hazy sun behind him, you can bring out some detail by punching up the Exposure Compensation button and dialing UP the exposure. And I did!! I also checked my ISO and deliberately used the "Program" mode and it worked. It was better than if I hadn't. Hahaha, I'm getting to be such a camera pro!!
Whoa!! I was cooking!! Then, while we're admiring the eagle at the top, we saw his mate sitting down lower in the tree. She was a lot lower than she normally was.
This is a different picture, honest. Hahaha, I couldn't decide which one to show and, what the heck, it's my blog so I decided to show both of them.
#toughtoenails
It's difficult to see them both but you can easily make out the one highest in the tree. The second one is just above the bottom of the picture to the left of center.
I still marvel at being able to see eagles here.
So a new place to shoot from; business done with Wells Fargo; a new jacket gotten and a couple of eagles photographed.
Well done, Jackie!! Well done!!
We had a good day and watched some good games as we prepare for supporting our Super Bowl Champion Seattle SeaHawks next week.
Did I mention they won the Super Bowl? Well, they did!!
Hahahahaha, lump it!!
Life is good.
Hooah!!
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