Our itinerary for the trip included flying into Seattle, spending the night and the next morning there, then moving on to Mt. Rainier, Mt. St. Helens, the Portland area, Crater Lake, and then returning up the Pacific Coast of Oregon. Since we were staying about three blocks from the Space Needle in Seattle, I had to get up early for some night shots of that. Here’s my favorite:

Those other-worldly pieces of metal framing the Needle are a nearby sculpture. This photo is what digital photographers would call a “High Dynamic Range” image – it’s made by blending one photo exposed for the sculpture with one exposed for the Space Needle. I made a number of photos from the top of the Space Needle on the return trip, but I’ll post those later.

The next morning before leaving for Mt. Rainier, we made a trip to Pike Place Market, where we stumbled across this delightful piece of calligraphy embedded in the asphalt near the main entrance:

I assume that the chop in the lower right corner is the name of the artist, but I can’t read it. If anyone knows what it says, please let me know so that I can credit the artist properly. I’d love to know who it is and see some other examples of his/her work.

Pike Place Market has something like 600 shops, and I’m not sure that counts all the fishmongers, flower merchants, produce stands and craftspeople who come and go. We were actually there before most of the retail shops opened, though, so we saw mostly the food and flowers. Here’s a brief taste:

We could easily have spent the day (or several days) there, but that was true of almost everywhere we visited during this trip. Next post: on to Mt. Rainier.

A larger collection of the photos from the trip will be available on my Flickr page.