Olympia, Washington

I arrived in Olympia Friday afternoon but was greeted by very poor air quality thanks to a nearby wildfire so I didn’t do much exploring when I got here.  Saturday I went downtown to wait for the Visitor Center to open at 9 o’clock and since I was a little early I walked over to get a photo of the Capitol building:

I may go back on Sunday to tour the inside, depending on the weather.

Next I drove south to try and see Mount Saint Helens again.  I was there briefly last year and my first visit was in 1993 (see next post).  Saturday the wildfire smoke wasn’t a problem but a persistent heavy overcast was and since I couldn’t see much I just headed back to Olympia and spent some time walking around town, mainly along the waterfront.

Olympia is at the southern tip of Budd Inlet, the southernmost body of water which includes Puget Sound, west of Seattle.  There is a long boardwalk which goes around much of the West Bay and this was piece of tile art which illustrates the spot where I was standing when I took the picture:

And raising the camera up, this is what I saw:

I was standing on the “red tiles” looking north.  Below the red tiles is another body of water, Capitol Lake, which is right next to the Capitol building.

I walked the full length of the boardwalk, which included a nice overview of the Olympia Yacht Club, thank you very much.  I wish I had gotten the full sequence but here is the tail end of a gentleman skillfully turning his boat around 180 degrees before docking it.  The guys standing on the dock had been sitting on the sailboat next to where he was “parking” and helped grab the lines to anchor the boat to the dock.

When I first saw this occurring the boat was perpendicular to the dock and as you can see, there wasn’t much room to work.  This obviously wasn’t the captain’s first rodeo because he pulled it off without a hitch and didn’t spill a drop of anyone’s martini.

Elsewhere on the dock I saw where someone had posed this thought-provoking question:

And along the way – more flowers!  There were lots of varieties but here are a few I could get clear pictures of that you haven’t seen on the blog in the past:

There were 2 or 3 other interesting ones but I couldn’t get the camera to focus properly (evidently I need a “macro” lens).

There were several art pieces scattered along the boardwalk and this is the one I liked the most:

It is called “Pig Listening in a Story Place” and the artist is Nancy Thorne-Chambers.

On my way back to my Airbnb I saw this cool treehouse just a few blocks away: