Kaleberg Archive for February 2014

02/25 - The Chihuly Glass Museum We finally visited the Chihuly Garden and Glass Museum in Seattle Center. We've walked past it dozens of times, but this time we had an out of town visitor and wanted to do something Seattle. Dale Chihuly, artist, visionary and promoter, has created some pretty amazing glass sculpture with emphasis on the organic and fantastic. These are all large scale works, indoors and outdoors, and these photographs don't really do them justice. They are meant to be seen as an environment, not as artifacts.	Organic forms
The fantastic	A smaller artifact
Fantastic forms	Another amazing sculpture
Outdoors in the garden	Organic forms
More fantastic flora	Fantastic ferns
More of the garden	Life imitating art

Keywords: seattle, art

02/21 - Amazing Skies at Hurricane Ridge The snow came late this winter, but there is a fair bit of it up on Hurricane Ridge lately. Even more amazing are the webcam images. It's 17 degrees up there now, and the road is closed at the moment, but the skies and mountains are at their winter best.
Looking east, towards the sunrise	Looking to the south

Keywords: hurricane ridge, weather, winter

02/15 - Seattle Restaurants

We tried three new restaurants in Seattle and here offer our brief reports.

Skillet Diner has wonderful hours and serves a sort of breakfast, lunch, dinner menu most of the day. They have a great corned beef hash and make good pulled pork, but we could have used a lot more pork on our sandwich. They definitely know their fried foods, as the fried chicken thighs were excellent. We'll probably be back, but more careful in our ordering.

Skillet Diner - Firearms prohibited

Aragona

Aragona, run by the same folks who run Artusi, opened with a big splash, but we were disappointed. The Seattle Times had a glowing review, but the restaurant needs a lot of tuning. The location, across from the Four Seasons, with views of the harbor, was wonderful, but the service was choppy. We never could arrange for our wine to arrive with our food. The menu, featuring Spanish country food, was interesting, but we found it a bit bland. We're hoping they'll get things more polished over the next year or so. The place definitely has promise.

Lark was our real find this trip. There is a big menu and we loved just about everything on it. The chicken liver mousse served with prunes and armagnac was creamy and savory. The king crab legs were fresh and simply prepared. There was an excellent spicy lamb ragout served with hearty pasta. All told, it was an excellent meal. We'll probably be back in a season or two to see how the menu varies.

Keywords: restaurants, seattle

02/14 - Seattle in Winter

We were in Seattle for a wild weekend of urban excitement. It was a strange trip, with all sorts of things being a bit trickier than we had expected. Some of this is because our trip spanned not only President's Day but also Valentine's Day. On the other hand, some things were unexpected, like Salumi running out of bread.

On the other hand, we did visit one of our favorite places in Seattle, the Ballard Locks. We checked out their winter garden. The daphnes were asleep, but the hellebores and witch hazel were in bloom.

Sorry, all out of bread.

Witch hazel

The Ballard Locks

The railroad bridge at the locks

Seattle at night

Keywords: seattle, winter

02/08 - Winter Icicles We took a walk along the Spruce Railroad trail during one of our recent cold snaps. There was ice on the little waterfalls and icicles on branches low by the water. We were half icicle by the time we finished our walk, but the scenery was really impressive.	Snow on the mountains
Icicles	More icicles
A frozen waterfall	More frozen water
Dangling ice formations, for the want of a thesaurus	An array of icicles

Keywords: spruce railroad, winter, waterfall

02/04 - Dungeness Spit - The Joys of High Tide There are actually some good hiking tides at the Dungeness Spit this time of year. Check the left hand column of this blog for the up and coming. There are also some serious high tides, and the whole spit is different. There isn't all that much of a gap between the stranded driftwood and the water, and that gap is mainly small stones which make for hard going. We made it to the half mile mark and had a very nice work out doing so.	The half mile marker at high tide, usually way inland
Driftwood	A rocky beach
The half mile marker by the sea	The view south, pretty amazing

Keywords: dungeness spit, tides

02/01 - Marymere Falls - Rainforest for Rainy Days The skies this winter have been rain skies with gray clouds and a menacing air. That's perfect weather for exploring, of all places, the rainforest. We checked out Marymere Falls. It's a perfect threatening-rain hike, just 45 minutes, so one can dash back to the car if the heavens open.	The falls
A classic national park stairway	Logs in Barnes Creek

Keywords: marymere falls, weather, winter

January 2014

February 2014

March 2014