After our walk to the glass bridge, Laurie, Matt and I visited Port Defiance Park where we ate some lunch, peered at the fort (we visited the gift shop and didn’t pay to go into the fort) and then took a walk along one of the trails.
We also went on a tour of the Elks Temple. Our tour guide was great, very enthusiastic, and we were the only people, so we could ask a lot of questions.
Then we rested and got ready for the ceremony.
We removed the boxes around our ring boxes.
Burt and Laurie drove us, so we paid for the parking. Marriage ceremonies in Washington happen after 4 p.m. You can see that we arrived right at the end of the metered parking day and paid twenty-five cents for one minute of parking.
There were a few hours left of being engaged (what I like to call instead planning a wedding) and so we used the pretty backdrop at the Bridge of Glass to take a few photos.
We had a musical interlude.
We were thwarted by the sun.
But managed to not be too squinty in this photo.
On the way back we took this timer photo that I think turned out quite nice, even with the flare.
And here we join together to create the letter looming over us.
After breakfast we finally told Laurie and Burt that we had lured them to Tacoma so they could be our witnesses. They were excited.
Laurie, looking for outdoor things to avoid COVID, had found the Chihuly Bridge of Glass, which was a not-far walk from our hotel. We set out to explore.
Though I felt like I was tempting fate to mail announcements before the ceremony, my want to get those envelopes out the door ASAP outweighed my worry about tempting fate. So I set off for the post office. Here’s what I saw along the way.
This gorgeous building, currently not occupied.
I love all the brickwork and detail.
These lovely lights.
This mural.
The actual mailing of the announcements. You can see I was nearly 14 minutes into my walk when I took this picture.
This was my favorite find.
Look at these great stairs. And landscaping!
More great muralage.
A gorgeous old Woolworth’s building. (A thing I just learned from Wikipedia while looking up the possessive situation with the Woolworth name: On October 20, 2001, the company changed names again; taking the name of its top retail performer and became Foot Locker, Inc., which Woolworth started in 1974. The corporate history of Woolworth is legally included in the history of Foot Locker, Inc., which is the legal continuation of Woolworth. Who knew? Not me!)
I thought it was interesting that Idaho ranch land was offered for sale in Tacoma.
This gorgeous quartet of ghost murals. I think a building must have come down fairly recently for that outfitting company’s to be so vibrant. That, or it is a recreation. But see that line above it? I’m leaning toward the first theory.
And more ghost murals.
Who knew that Rossell G. O’Brien started this particular tradition? Not me! (It’s slightly less interesting than the Woolworth/Footlocker connection.)
Even more muralage, this time with the building at the beginning of the post.
This gorgeous mosaic.
And finally, back at the Elks Temple, the joy that is the fifth floor.
We ate our last dinner as single people at the Over the Moon Cafe, which was just around the corner from our hotel. The food was delicious. It’s very much a place to go for big occasions, like anniversaries and the like.
Aside from delicious food and drink, every table had a small box where people leave notes about their meal and celebration. I left one.
Just to establish the angle of the streets just outside our hotel.
I tried on about 20 dresses at Savvy Plus, and this was the winner. I love that it goes with the blue shirt Matt picked out and also that it isn’t blue. It’s not an orange dress, but it has orange in it.
Heads up. This will be a bunch of photos that are not well taken. I’m not in peak form for photo composition.
I decided to take the bus to Seaside for the day as a summer activity. There was some confusion where to load onto the bus. My ticket very clearly instructed me it was NOT loading at the train station, so I spent 45 minutes waiting at the Greyhound stop outside the train station, only to eventually hear an announcement that my bus was loading at the train station. So there was that.
Once I got on the bus, though, I hit transportation eavesdropping gold. Four college students who had internships at Intel, Nike, and Adidas, but were from the same college in Texas, chatted all about their Portland adventures. Plus they gossiped about people they knew. I find listening to gossip about people I don’t know to be one of life’s more sublime things.
The bus stops at Camp 18 to switch drivers. I think one driver does the coast part and the other does the Portland-to-Camp-18 part.
The bus stops first in Canon Beach, then in Seaside before going to Astoria. In Seaside, the drop off point was the youth hostel. I thought I knew where that was located, but I did not. It’s closer to the cineplex than downtown Seaside, so I had a bit more of a walk than I thought.
I had fish and chips at the place I like to have fish and chips and then headed to the promenade. It was overcast.
I did some beach sitting and reading and people watching, and eventually got tired of sitting. So I did some walking.
I’m not quite sure what happened with this picture. Maybe the blurriness came from how fast I was taking the photo? Anyway, I loved how these teens were dressed alike.
It turned out the overcast morning was a blessing. Because once the sun came out, there wasn’t much escaping it, especially since I’d already eaten. And I had forgotten sunscreen, so I needed to get out of the sun.
And that’s when I discovered the most amazing thing.
Back when I worked at DHM, my coworker had said in passing, “I just love playing Fascination when I’m in Seaside.” Then she mimed a grabbing something and slowly flinging it away.
I had no idea what she was talking about. I think she mentioned the arcade. That conversation got filed in my brain. But walking past the arcade, I stopped and looked in. Then hovered inside the door. Because this was Fascination.
Here’s how it works. You take a seat and put a quarter down. Or, if you are going to play more than one game, you put down a dollar. A bell rings and you roll a ball and try to get it in one of the open spaces. When you do, one of the circles on the mirror facing you lights up. If you get five in a row, you are the winner. A bell rings again and the game shuts down for everyone else. Mostly though, you aren’t a winner and are one of the people groaning that you didn’t win. But it’s still fun, even if you don’t win.
Here’s the winning breakdown.
The combo of working toward something on your own while competing in a group is incredibly fun. Apparently, Fascination used to be a regular thing at amusement parks and boardwalks, but it’s fairly high maintenance. It’s built on telephone technology (rotary telephone technology!) and so parts aren’t made anymore. Plus, it’s fairly labor intensive, as someone has to go around and collected the quarters and make change. So it’s on its way out. But for as much fun as it is, I’m glad I finally discovered it. Here’s the Wikipedia summary that lists all the remaining locations.
The bus ride home provided an equal opportunity for eavesdropping gold. Three tourists (one solo traveler, one mother-daughter combo) chatted about what they’d been up to. They were putting a good face on their trip, but I could tell Portland was kind of bringing all three of them down. I made a list of things they might like to do and handed it off as I was exiting. I hope their trip got better.
