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La Cuesta Encantada – The Upstairs Suites

La Cuesta Encantada – The Upstairs Suites

  • Travel
If you were lucky enough to be invited to stay at the Castle, you could expect to find yourself in pretty spectacular surroundings. We saw the public rooms in the previous post, now let’s have a look at bedrooms.

Hearst never “finished” working on the Castle, and probably never

La Cuesta Encantada – The Grand Rooms

La Cuesta Encantada – The Grand Rooms

  • Travel
“This must be a new experience for you to see the grand home of rich people”, I said to the British family joining us on our first tour.

Hearst imagined The Enchanted Hill not as a house or even a single structure. His model was a small Spanish town with

La Cuesta Encantada – The Visitor Center

La Cuesta Encantada – The Visitor Center

  • Travel
Most folks call this monument to tasteful pillaging Hearst Castle but its given name is La Cuesta Encantada, which means The Enchanted Hill. I’m here to tell you that when you sprinkle the fairy dust of money on ranch land, you conjure up a whole boatload ‘o enchanted architecture.
Itty Bitty Inn

Itty Bitty Inn

  • Travel
Meet Rik, creator and proprietor of the Itty Bitty Inn in North Bend, Oregon. Although the motel was built in 1950, you can bet it didn’t look like this in the early days. Rik took over about 1980 and began the transformation into the whacky place you see today.
moh-tuh-vey-shuhn

moh-tuh-vey-shuhn

Why the funny name for this post? If you live nearby, I’m hoping to motivate you to visit SAM and see Giacometti’s works for yourself.

This is a small taste of what’s on display. There are sketches, paintings, many more sculptures and a short film showing the

Étude – Getting close!

Étude – Getting close!

  • News
We dropped into the Nordic factory on our way back from Canada. I was hoping for a firm delivery date, but didn’t get one. As best we know, Étude will be on the water some time before the end of the month.

But that’s not delivery. It’s

Glass!

Glass!

This post is a test. I moved my blog to a new cloud server and want to make sure that posting, including the email notification sent out, still works.

As long as I was testing, I figured I might as well include some pretty photos of glass work from the

Water!

Water!

  • Photos
We nipped in just ahead of closing day to take a look at OUR BLUE PLANET: GLOBAL VISIONS OF WATER at the Seattle Art Museum. It was an interesting exhibit, although the connection of some of the works to water was sometimes tenuous.

Pacific Northwest tribes were well-represented. Beyond traditional

Étude – What a mess!

Étude – What a mess!

  • News
No, your eyes are not going wonky. All of the photos in this post were taken with a 28mm wide angle lens. I figured I’d need it for the interior shots, then was too lazy to switch to a different lens for photos outside of the boat.

You won’

Random, Arizona

Random, Arizona

  • Travel
Theres no story to be told this time, just a few photos of things i thought you might like to see.

Well, maybe one little story…

Some of you, my most perceptive and tasteful of readers, have said nice things about a few of my photos. That got me thinking.

Étude – Two Become One

Étude – Two Become One

  • News
It was the best of posts, it was the worst of posts.

With apologies to Charles Dickens

OK, “worst” may be a little harsh. But it worked with the quote and isn’t that what’s really important?

I say worst because there isn’t a lot of new information

Étude – Making Water

Étude – Making Water

  • News
“Making water”. Sounds kind of like magic, doesn’t it? Well it’s not magic, it’s misrepresentation. Water-making is really water filtering, and it’s energy-intensive which is why we’re not all drinking the Pacific Ocean.

Creating drinking water to rival any bottled product from plain old sea

Sevilla Leftovers

Sevilla Leftovers

  • Travel
It’s been a while since we were able to get together with our friends Andy and Danielle so it was great that we were able to see them for four days in Sevilla.

Andy and I go way back. Back to about 1982 when he was living in Hong

The Alhambra

The Alhambra

  • Travel
“Do not weep like a woman for what you could not defend as a man.”

Abu Abdallah’s mother

Ouch!

In 1492, besides Columbus sailing the ocean blue, the Moorish king Abu Abdallah surrendered the Alhambra to the Christian forces of Ferdinand and Isabella. As he cast a last backwards