The Amazon Spheres

The Seattle Esperanto Society recommended a visit to the Amazon Spheres in downtown Seattle. They have been here for about a year, but we had never heard of them. They are three globular "structures" of glass and steel and occupy about half of a city block. Amazon uses them as part of their office work space. They are open to the public two Saturdays per month by reservation (https://www.seattlespheres.com/). You would need to get a reservation a couple weeks in advance, since they always fill up!

The interior is mostly given over to tropical plants. We visited on a cold, cloudy day in January and had to take our coats off.

This is looking straight up one of the walls on the interior. It is a 60 foot "Living Wall" of plants. It was made off-site on wall panels and assembled in the Sphere. 

This is the same "Living Wall" from another angle.

The interior was beautifully lit and arranged. This is an area called "The Forest." It is full of orchids, ferns and other beautiful plants. It is very relaxing to walk through.

This is one of the wall plant displays. There were at least a dozen of these scattered around on walls.

These are pitcher plants. They trap insects to supply them with the nitrogen they need to grow.

This is a "Green Velvet Umbrella Plant". You are not supposed to touch any of the plants, so we don't know if it feels like velvet or just looks that way.

This is looking down into "The Forest" from one of the upper levels.

The "Birds Nest" is on the "Canopy Walk" on the third level. The entrance to the Spheres is on ground level. There are a total of four levels inside the Spheres.

This is how they keep everything so green! The temperature is maintained at 72 degrees. The watering / humidity system is computer controlled and will go off whenever needed to maintain the 60% humidity. When there are a lot of people visiting, it doesn't turn on as often. Humans breathe out about 1 liter of water a day. We had a bit of luck getting this shot. There was a line to pose in front of "the spheres" but when the misters turned on, they all scattered!

This is the "cruise lounge" on the fourth (top) level. If you are an Amazon employee, you can come up here for your daily "rest" after lunching at the coffee shop or enduring a stressful business meeting.

Christmas in Oregon 2018

We enjoyed going down to the beach in Oregon for our Christmas trip. Here we are on the Candy Cane Express train that runs from Garibaldi to Rockaway in Oregon. The trip is only about 5 miles, but the train takes about half an hour each way. It was actually a lot of fun! We got cookies, hot chocolate and candy canes from Santa and Mrs. Claus.

"Here comes Santa Claus, Here comes Santa Claus, Right down Santa Claus Lane!"

Here is Alonda with Santa Claus himself!

Jim got to be with Mrs. Claus.

The train was pulled by a genuine steam engine. It wasn't one of those fake tourist engines, either. This was the engineer pulling the engine out of the engine house just outside of our hotel window.

The route went north along the coast line.

This tree was full of cormorants perching in the sunlight. They have to get up and dry their wings periodically. 

This is the beach at Rockaway. It is a long, sandy beach with a good look due west into the Pacific Ocean. The train didn't stop long here. Nobody got off and nobody got on.

On our way down to Oregon, we stopped at the mouth of the Columbia River at Astoria, Oregon. This is the bridge that goes north across the river into Washington State. Full size ships go under it to go upriver to dock near Portland, Oregon.

This is the Astoria Column. It is the last in a series of 12 historical markers along the route of Lewis & Clark from St. Paul, Minnesota to Astoria, Oregon. It was dedicated in July, 1926 and restored in 1995 and again in 2015.

The mural circles the column and celebrates the earliest moments of Northwest history. The events go from about 1792 to 1818. The Column had its Christmas lights up.  If you zoom in on the photo, you can see the details of the mural.

This the view south out of our hotel room on Christmas Day. The weather was glorious! Full sunshine and blue sky all day. The engine is part of the historical railroad collection in Garibaldi. They have a lot of rolling stock sitting around this part of Oregon. The stack is from the old sawmill which is long gone. We noticed that the top of the stack is starting to crumble and we don't want to be too close to it when it finally comes down!

This the beach at Garibaldi. It is sandy, but there was a large plus tide coming in.

This is the fishing and sport-fishing harbor at Garibaldi. They do a lot of crabbing here, too.

This is from the Bar View Jetty County Park north of Garibaldi. It is so popular with the campers that it funds all of the parks in the entire county.

This is a Christmas tree made out of crab pots. It was part of the town's Christmas decorations. It was all lit up at night.

They also had fish and crabs as part of the town decorations. The steam engine lives in the house right here.

When you are on the Oregon coast, you HAVE to visit the Tillamook Creamery (Cheese Factory). We have been here several times before, but you always have to come back. They have a self-guided tour, cheese tasting bar, gift shop and some excellent ice cream.

  This picture was taken from about 2 miles away from the largest free-standing, clear-span wooden structure in the world. It covers more than seven acres, the building is 1,072 feet long and towers more than 15 stories high. How would you like to have the job of painting "Air Museum" on something that large?

When you get closer, you realize how large the building really is. It makes a large airplane look small. This airplane was modified so it could move sections of the Saturn V booster rocket. You can see the hinges on the back. The entire rear end opens out to let them put in the booster.

We went to Kilchis Point Reserve south of Garibaldi to go hiking. This is a Pileated Woodpecker that we heard and then found. The paths through the Reserve were extensively signed with educational materials and the names of the trees and plants.

These are some of the "haystack rocks" which dominate the coast of Oregon. We were on our way to the Cape Meares State Park and Lighthouse.,

This is what most people think of when they hear the words "Oregon coast." This was Christmas Day and it was really spectacular.

Our goal of the day was to see this lighthouse. It is a small building (as you can see), but the light is quite high because it is built up on the cliff. There is a meteorological anomaly here and the light is "below the fog line" so it can be seen even on a bad night.

Happy New Year! We went to the Elks Lodge for the New Year and had a wonderful time!

Arizona 2018

We decided to take a three-week "snow-bird" trip down to Arizona to get out of the rain. We were able to visit friends and relatives who live in the Phoenix area. We rented a condo in this Racquet Club condo complex through a company called VRBO. We were very happy with the accommodations.

In the center of the complex was a clubhouse with an overlook tower. This gives you a good idea of what the area looks like. All the houses are the same color and have the same color roof. The landscaping depends very heavily on palm trees.

We went out for a hike at Papago Park. It is close to the zoo and the Desert Botanical Garden. The hike was very popular!

This is the view from the top toward downtown Phoenix and one of the many golf courses in the area.

If you look the other way, you can see the Saguaro cacti marching up the hills.

Near by was the "Hall of Flame" museum. It had some very old and some very new fire-fighting equipment. Some of the older pieces were real works of art!

You don't see a lot of fire engines in white paint!

We visited the Musical Instrument Museum (MIM). They were having a concert for young artists (middle school and high school students).

This is the "3 Amigas Trio." All told, there were ten performers in the concert. They were all extremely accomplished! Alonda was jealous.

The museum had an excellent collection of extremely varied instruments (old and new) from all over the world. Each exhibit had a sound component which would pop up in your headphones when you got close enough. The rock and roll collection was the most interesting to us.

Downtown Scottsdale is the home of the Museum of the West. It was mostly western artwork, but had a lot of western gear and memorabilia.

This is Jim with an extremely dusty old American Buffalo.

A surprising museum was the Penske Museum featuring a lot of the Penske racing team cars. Not so surprising was that the museum was in the middle of very expensive car dealerships. If you are in Phoenix and want a Jaguar, Maserati, Ferrari, etc., then this is the place!

The Heard Museum is one of the most famous of the "western / Native Peoples" museums. Very impressively laid out and well done, but hard to photograph the exhibits. They were almost all in glass cases.

Old Town Scottsdale was all decked out for tourists and Christmas. Good place for souvenirs and gifts. You could ride the stagecoach, but we didn't.

We had dinner and a visit with Jim's older brother Cris and his wife Victoria. They live in the western part of Phoenix.  They both work as nurses.

We went to Sedona with Sandee, Alonda's U of I roommate. Sedona is famous for its red rocks. This is the view from the National Parks Tourist Information Center. They gave us good advice on visiting around for the day and going into town.

Snoopy was there, too.

Here is the "Snoopy Rock."

We went to Tempe and visited Barb Weaver. We knew her when she lived next to us at our condo in Bremerton. She moved down to Mesa about ten years ago. This is Josephine, one of the jack rabbits who inhabit Tempe. They are part of a series of twelve, life-size bronze statues who make up a Public Art Scavenger Hunt. We found six of the twelve before we decided we were too tired to keep looking. 

This is Barb with one of the non-life-sized bronze jack rabbit statues in Tempe. "Jeremy" should have been near this gigantic rabbit, but we couldn't find him. Maybe next trip ...

Here are Barb and Jim next to Lake Tempe. It is a completely artificial lake in the middle of the desert.

In Queens Creek, Arizona, there is a large olive farm. The tour tells you a LOT about how olives are grown and processed into oil.

This is the modern way of planting olives.

This is the old-fashioned way of planting olives. The new method more than doubles the number of olives per acre.

The gift shop was where you could taste all of the kinds of olives and olive oils they produce. There was also a coffee roaster and a very good restaurant. They had ice cream, too, but it was winter.

The Desert Botanical Garden is in Phoenix. This is the state tree of Arizona: the palo verde. It has leaves, but the trunk of the tree also has chlorophyll.

This is the "teddy-bear" cactus. It is called that because it is so friendly. If you touch it, the spines will never let go and an entire branch of the cactus will break off and go with you!

Here is a blooming prickly pear cactus. You will see prickly pear jelly and candy for sale all over Arizona.

The Botanical Garden had a section devoted to butterflies. This Monarch is the best known butterfly in America.

They had not only a butterfly section, but a section devoted to plants and flowers that attract hummingbirds.

We also visited the Butterfly Wonderland in Scottsdale. It was a beautiful exhibit. It was a large, enclosed conservatory with butterflies everywhere. You had to be careful entering and leaving so you didn't let them out!

This is a Blue Morpho. When the angle of the light changes, so does the color of this butterfly.

The butterflies got on everything and everyone!

Next to the Butterfly Wonderland was the OdySea Aquarium. This is a giant Skate in a touch tank at the aquarium. You can touch them as they go by since their stingers have been removed. 

The best exhibit was a rotating auditorium that showed you four different large tanks. You stayed in the same seat and the entire thing rotated.

We had a very nice trip to Arizona and it only rained a couple of times at night!

We got back to Seattle just in time to see the winter sunset.