Our first stop was the Washington History Museum (shown above with part of the University of Washington-Tacoma behind it to the right). It's got so many interesting exhibits I could have spent the whole day there. They had a special show of art quilts which were fascinating but, unfortunately, photographs were not permitted. Gabe and Jim spent much of their time sitting on benches waiting for me. It takes a lot of patience to go to a museum with me because I want to read everything.
Next stop was the Museum of Glass. It's one level down from the History Museum next to a canal with a marina. To get to it we had to cross the Chihuly Bridge of Glass and walk down a very long flight of steps. Walking over to the bridge gave us a nice view of Union Station and some of the city's skyline.
Tacoma's Union Station is a very impressive building.
Some of Tacoma's skyline.
The Bridge of Glass was one of the things I wanted to see in Tacoma. Dale Chihuly is a world-renowned blown-glass artist and the ceiling over the bridge is full of his work. Only, it isn't entirely his work which I didn't know until Gabe told me. He lost the sight in his left eye when he was thrown through the windshield in a car accident in 1976, but what really prevented him from continuing to do the physical work himself was when he dislocated his shoulder in a bodysurfing accident in 1979. He could no longer hold the glass-blowing pipe so had to hire other people to do the work. He then discovered it gave him a new perspective and he really preferred being the director to being an actor. The problem with the way he's gone about it is that the people who work for him in his studio get no credit. People who don't know much about him would probably just assume he does it all himself. His estimated sales in 2004 were $29 million. Even if he were still capable of doing the work himself, there's no way one man could do that much by himself.
The Museum of Glass is in a building shaped like a slanted cone.
A Chihuly glass sculpture in a pool between the museum and the marina.
Chihuly's Crystal Towers on the Bridge of Glass.
The ceiling over the Bridge of Glass is full of Chihuly glass.
We checked out the museum and found there were no special exhibits going on. Since Gabe had seen everything in the permanent displays (probably several times) and I was happy with just seeing all the art glass in the gift shop, we decided to move along to lunch. That's always high on our list of things to do. We didn't want to use up our time going to a regular restaurant so we went to the Subway across the street to get our strength up.
We did discover there was another way to return to the level we needed to be on so we didn't have to walk back up all those stairs. It wasn't easy to find though. We had to take an elevator down one level to the parking garage, walk across the garage and take another elevator up two floors to the right level.....and nowhere were there any signs about it. No help at all to the mobility-challenged.
The Olympic Mountains in the distance.
After lunch we headed for our final destination which was historic Fort Nisqually at Point Defiance Park. The drive to the park is along Commencement Bay. Across the water was a view of the Olympic Mountains where we'll be going on Saturday. The drive was beautiful but traffic was bumper-to-bumper so Jim wasn't able to see much besides the vehicle in front of us.
Fort Nisqually is a living history museum. The fort was originally close to the area we visited yesterday at Nisqually National Wildlife Refuge. (The name Nisqually comes from the Indian tribe that was living here when Europeans came to the area.) The remaining buildings were moved to Point Defiance Park to be incorporated into the museum. The original fort wasn't military but was built and maintained by the Hudson's Bay Company which owned a massive amount of land here. Fur and trading kept everything going until the fur business declined. The focus was then placed on agriculture. The fort ended up on American soil after the 1846 treaty set the boundary between British North America and the U.S. as the 49th parallel. The Hudson's Bay Company lost a lot in that deal.
The granary at Fort Nisqually, one of the oldest buildings in Washington State.
The granary and several other buildings are post-and-sill construction which was common in French Canada. Most of the trappers employed by the Hudson's Bay Company were either French Canadian or Scottish.
Tomorrow we're going to Shelton which is about 40 miles from here on the other side of Olympia. We're going to see an old family friend who was my father's secretary in the early 1950's in South Africa. I haven't seen her since we left there in 1954. Since it's not a sightseeing trip I don't know if I'll have anything to post tomorrow night.
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