Seattle Chihuly Glass

This last batch of photos from Seattle were taken at the Chihuly Garden and Glass. Unfortunately, a section of the museum was closed, but there was still lots to see. It was quite dark inside, with bright lights on the glass, which made for challenging photography. Enjoy!

One of the sections was ocean related.

There was a passageway where sculptures covered the ceiling.

These boats full of glass were quite striking, one of my favorites.

The glasshouse sculpture was huge - 100 feet long.

An outdoor sculpture with the glasshouse in the background.

I liked the combination of the garden with the glass mixed in. This was a bit similar to a Chihuly exhibit we saw at the Phoenix (Arizona) Botanical Gardens.

Even a selfie in one of the glass balls.

See all 38 photos in this batch

Seattle Sculpture Park

The Olympic Sculpture Park is on the waterfront near the ferry terminal (and our hotel). It's an enjoyable place to wander around.

The plants seemed slightly further along than in Victoria, but not by much. These seem more like crocuses but I think they're Winter Daffodils.

Whereas I think these are spring crocuses

They're often regarded as invasive pests, but I like starlings. From a distance they tend to just look black but they can be quite colorful if you catch them in the right light.

There were various birds on the water, including Surf Scoters with their funny looking bills.

and Common Goldeneyes with reflections :-)

There was also a cute little Cottontail rabbit in the park.

While this metal tree was quite striking, I think I prefer the real ones.

The larches were busy growing new needles. I enjoyed observing the larches at Innovation Place.

Oregon Grape was flowering

which the insects, like this Common Drone Fly, were also enjoying

And Red-flowering Current (I think)

This lichen was almost as colorful as the flowers

And with the water nearby, I couldn't pass up some reflections.

See all 34 photos in this batch

Herd Peak

Our last day of paragliding we headed to Herd Peak. The weather forecast was good, but unfortunately the wind was too strong to launch. ("blown out" in paragliding lingo) On the positive side, it was so strong that we didn't have to hum and haw over whether to fly.

We drove up to the launch anyway. There are beautiful views of Mt. Shasta and the wildflowers were wonderful. Normally I like to take close ups of flowers but with the wind so strong that was pretty much impossible.





I managed to get this close up by finding a flower inside a bush where it was sheltered from the wind.



Since we had time, we stopped in at the nearby Living Memorial Sculpture Garden.







These photos were taken with the little ZS100 since I thought we'd be flying, not photographing.

For more of these photos see all 15 as a slideshow or overview

See also Shelley's blog post