A picture is worth a 1000 words….
Waiting for the elevator I look down on the gift shop below.
Lots of people on the observation deck waiting for the same thing I am.
Seattle at night.
Sunset
Space Needle at night
Category Archives: attraction
Space Needle
I perused the Seattle Guide books while I was in my room each night and was amazed at the number of things to do in the area. But in my humble opinion the number 1 thing to do is visit the Space Needle and not just to see it. You need to experience it. Take the elevator up the side and explore the 360 degree observation deck.
So here I was boarding the mono rail to check out the Space Needle. You can see it from all over Seattle. It looks like a big space ship landing on the high rises.
The mono rail is pretty neat too. It was built for the 1962 Seattle World’s Fair to shuttle fair goers from the downtown to the fair grounds. After the fair ended the mono rail lived on.
It takes less than 5 minutes to go from one station to the other! It took me 3 times that just to walk to the station from the hotel!
It’s in great shape. Clean and well maintained. If only our Boston subway cars looked as good. Today, the trains carry approximately two million passengers every year. The Monorail has become an important fixture in Seattle for locals, who use the trains during major festivals and sporting events. Seattle Center Monorail is one of the few fully self-sufficient public rail transit system in the nation yet a one way ticket is only $2.25. Someone is doing something right. Maybe we should ship the MBTA execs out for training.
The mono rail runs on an elevated track right down 5th avenue past my hotel. I spent some time sitting on a cement wall watching it go overhead.
Ticket in hand I grabbed a seat for the short ride. It wasn’t crowded and in a blink of an eye we were pulling into Seattle Center right at the base of the Space Needle.
No mistaking me for anything but what I was, an awestruck tourist. As I stepped off the Mono rail platform I know my mouth was hanging open while I reached for my camera. The Space Needle is amazing up close. You can get a stiff neck looking up to the top.
As I got my bearings I saw an unmistakable sight. A Chihuly Glass sculpture. I recognized it from the exhibit I’d seen at the MFA in Boston.
Since it was early I headed toward the sculpture first. It was sitting behind locked gates and there was a big glass building behind it with another familiar glass exhibit.
I followed the path around only to find out the Chihuly Garden was closed for the day. The Sign on the door said they would be open until 8pm the next day. I knew right then that I would be back.
But now it was time to turn my attention to the Space Needle.
Day at the Zoo
It’s the last day in Alaska and I’m so glad we are spending it at the Zoo. I love zoos. I even went to the zoo in Hawaii.
So we arrived via the Zoo shuttle right to the entrance. When it’s time to leave the shuttle will pick us up right in the parking lot. There’s even a little bench to sit on while we wait.
We bought our tickets and picked up our maps and followed a family of rambunctious little ones onto the paths. The paths cross crossed and meandered so we picked the “must see” animals and figured we’d go there first. Grizzlies were on that list but they were also on the far side of the zoo.
There was a little deer in an exhibit that was just full of mischief. A Maintenance worker was repairing the enclosure and she just followed him everywhere trying to chew on his pants. When he finally shooed her away she took off to pick on a poor , abused looking turkey that shared her enclosure.
The tiger was sleeping and wasn’t going to move for anyone.
The wolves were pretty riled up. They paced along the fence line. A family with very young children were watching. The wolves seemed to be fixed on the kids. Did they think they were prey? A snack? The kids started making howling sounds and the pack joined in.
Once the family moved on the pack dispersed back into the trees in their habitat.
We saw a snowy owl, one of the birds that winters in MA and that I am still trying to get a photo of in the wild.
There was a beautiful bald eagle. They are so majestic that it always makes me feel bad when I see them in captivity. On the other hand many of the captive eagles were injured and couldn’t be rehabilitated enough to survive in the wild. I guess being captive is better than the alternative.
We passed the black bear, a moose hiding in the shadows, and a pretty little red fox snoozing in the sun.
We got a close up look at the caribou.
We crossed a bridge over a pond and watched the swan whose very presence owned the pond. I’m not a “birder” but I think it was a Trumpeter Swan. We have “Mute” Swans around home and it wasn’t that. The bill was black while the Mute Swans have yellow bills and a black eye ridge.
Silly me spotted a squirrel and the picture I got of him is one of my favorites.
There was a good exhibit of the Dall Sheep so we finally got to see this elusive animal up close.
Finally we spotted the grizzly bear enclosure. They weren’t cooperating any more than the wild ones. One was sprawled in the brook in the shade down in a corner of the enclosure. No good angle for a picture. The other one was in a hollow taking a nap. His big foot and an ear about all that could be seen.
By now we’d spent more than an hour so we needed to hustle back to catch the shuttle. We passed the otters and stopped for a minute at the Polar Bears.
We skipped the musk ox and probably a few other animals but time was now of the essence. It was harder to find our way out of the zoo than in!
Finally the exit and timing was perfect. The shuttle was pulled up and waiting.
Anchorage
As Mr. Roberts would say “It’s a lovely day in the neighborhood.” And that would be very true here in Anchorage. Sunny and warm, a perfect day! We ate breakfast in the hotel. When we were ready to go exploring the doorman pointed us in the right direction. It was just a couple of blocks to the Visitor Center, a sod thatched log cabin right there on a main street.
Our plan for the day was the Anchorage Zoo. There was a shuttle from the Visitor Center right to the Zoo. We got there just after the shuttle had pulled out so we had about 30-40 minutes to wait. I wandered the street exploring the souvenir shops while Sandy went into the Visitor Center and chatted with the ladies working in there.
Nearby was a Cultural Museum. That would have been interesting if there was more time. The totem poles were different.
One of the stores had a big plush bear in front of it.
Another was called “Once in a Blue Moose.” How cute is that !
I loved the Blue Moose totem pole by the door.
Look at that! They have a sign post! The first time I ever saw one of these was in Hawaii. Its a sign post with the distance to other places like North Pole. San Francisco, Seattle, Boston and so on. It’s always interesting to see what places made it onto a sign like this.
A trolley was offering city tours and if we’d had more time that would have been high on my list of first things to do. Trolley tours at a new location are one of the best ways to get the “lay of the land” but since we were only going to be here one day the zoo was a better choice.
When the Zoo shuttle arrived and we got settled, the driver told us how nice it was to finally get sunshine and warm weather. Like everyone else she said spring had come late this year. Normally the weather we were getting now should have started 2 weeks earlier. Just our luck!
It was about a 20 minute ride to the zoo. We were dropped off right by the entrance. We’d have about 1.5 hours before we’d have to catch the shuttle back so we could get back to the hotel for our shuttle to the airport. The driver said it was a little zoo and that we’d have plenty of time.
Maybe now I’d finally get to see some of the iconic Alaskan animals that had been eluding me.
Natural History Tour into Denali
As we’d been told our tour was on an old school bus style bus. Remember those windows that you could open from the top by squeezing the release mechanism ? The window would then open 1/2 way so the top of the window was open but not the bottom. Sort of like a double hung window for a bus. Well that’s the kind of windows we had. To take pictures you had to balance on the seat to get the window open and then either lean back (Still standing…sort of) or lean over the seat in front of you to get a shot with no window glass or frame in the way.
The bench seats had been replaced but that was the only change and it might have been easier to take pictures from the bench seats than the captain style. Each row of seats was placed so the frame of the window was right in the way.
Sandy and I settled in and I took the inside by the window. We’d been told that the bus would stop for wildlife and if it was safe, let us out to take pictures. In all the brochures you see the bus on the side of the road with the occupants standing outside watching the wildlife. We were about to discover that “art” and life were very different.
Once everyone was on our driver made a strange announcement. He said if we were on the tour to see wildlife then we were on the wrong bus. As far as I knew from chatting with the others on the tour, we all wanted to see wildlife. No one got off so I thought he must be kidding.
He took a head count and we were on our way. Everyone’s eyes were peeled hoping to see animals. And we did begin spotting some. First up were moose.
We spotted a couple making their way through the snow. One of them had a radio collar and she seemed to be struggling.
At first we were all concerned until someone suggested that she might be about to give birth and that was why she was having trouble getting through the snow when the other moose was fine. I hope that was the case. It made everyone feel better anyway.
We stopped at a rest area where 2 rangers gave a short presentation about the history of the area.
One of them had a really vintage looking uniform and with his beard he was a ranger “poster boy”.
We also got another chance to see Denali (Mt. McKinley) who was again cooperating with us.
The “rest rooms ” were quite state of the art too.
As we stopped at the ranger check point that was as far as cars could go we saw a little Alaskan ground squirrel. He stuck around for quite a few minutes so we all had a chance to get pictures. He’s a cute little fella, isn’t he.
I also spotted a grouse, in fact several, but they blended in with the brush and were so quick to hide that I didn’t get a picture . The bus was moving and if I’d yelled stop they would have been out of sight before he could hit the brakes.
There were more sea gulls flying around. Seemed strange so far from the sea. But it was time to turn around and head back to the lodge.