Our first stop of the day was to take a guided tour of the Capitol Building.
The Washington State Capitol Building in Olympia which is very impressive. This is the side.....we never got around to the front.
The complex of state buildings, which includes the capitol building, were built in the 1920's. The present capitol building itself was built between 1922 and 1928. The first attempt to build it had to be abandoned due to lack of money. When a new company was hired to complete it, the original foundation had to be demolished in order to accommodate the new and larger dome.
The interior of the building is beautiful. The floors and walls are all Italian marble. The ceilings and rest of the walls are hand-painted.
The reception hall with Italian marble walls, hand-painted ceiling and original (and reupholstered) 1920's furniture. The 25.5' x 55' carpet is the largest ever made by Mohawk Mills in New York. It was made in one piece and is massively heavy.
The Seal of the State of Washington is in the middle of the rotunda's floor. It is blocked off by ropes to prevent people from walking on it which they used to be able to do until it was noticed that George Washington's nose was being flattened.
One of the four sides of the rotunda, again with Italian marble walls and hand-painted ceiling.
A close-up of the hand-painted detail in the ceiling.
Another view of the hand-painted ceiling. The rotunda's chandelier is also visible.
The most amazing thing in the building is this chandelier which hangs in the rotunda. It weighs 5 tons and hangs on a 127-foot-long chain which weighs 1.5 tons. It's made of brass which is no longer polished because of the difficulty and expense of doing it. The docent leading our tour said when it was polished it was so bright it was almost blinding. The light bulbs are the same type as street lights so they'll last as long as possible. The chandelier cannot be lowered so, when bulbs need to be changed or something else must be done, scaffolding must be built up to the 6th floor to reach it.
The chandelier is so big a VW Beetle would fit, standing on its nose, inside the globe. These figures near the top are life-sized.
After our capitol building tour we caught the free shuttle to the Olympia Farmers' Market on the waterfront. Lots of wonderful-looking veggies and fruits had to be by-passed because we didn't want to carry them for several hours.
The capitol building from the waterfront. We had an excellent lunch in a waterfront café near this spot.
After a walk around half of Capitol Lake which is below the capitol building, we drove to the other side of Olympia (it's not a big town) to see the unusual artesian well which is a constant source of free water to whoever needs it. The plaza around it has been decorated with murals. Water now comes through an easily accessed pipe where people can fill all the water jugs they want for free. When not being collected in jugs it runs into the storm drain underneath the pipe.
On the way back to Camp Murray from Olympia, through the usual bumper-to-bumper traffic, we got another great view of Mount Rainier looming over the area.
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