Seattle in Golden Light - Aerial

Seattle skyline in golden light over indigo waters of Elliot Bay
Lake Washington in the background
Click the image for larger view

Evening Ferry

Cityrise

Seattle in the mist

Into the Sunset

Seattle Great Wheel

This is the inaugural weekend for the brand new Seattle Great Wheel, a large Ferris wheel on a pier on the Seattle Waterfront. As one might imagine, the queues for this attraction are fairly long - roughly an hour from the beginning of the ticket line to boarding the gondola. The price is $13 per adult; $8.50 for children 12 and under.

More information: Seattle Great Wheel web site.

The Seattle Great Wheel on Opening Weekend

The ticket is a card with bar codes that correspond to an account that can be reloaded and reused. One is pictured at the bottom of this post.

The ride is smooth and comfortable. The gondolas are enclosed. There are narrow slit windows at the top that can open for ventilation and there is also heat and air conditioning. There's even a call button on the ceiling in case someone has an emergency. The ride can operate rain or shine. And it has that new Ferris Wheel smell!

Edge-on

A few of the people in the gondola I rode were initially a bit skittish about the heights but settled down after the loading rotation and were fine after that.

This thing is big

I am not posting many view pictures - we'll leave that for the experience of riding the thing. I will comment though that at about 200' high, the view of the waterfront is quite impressive, but it is dwarfed by the city itself.

From inside a gondola it looks a little like a roller coaster

I don't know if I'd make this a regular thing, but I enjoyed it and might return to share it with visitors on special occasions.

The wheel also has an elaborate LED light show which I will return to photograph some evening in the future, when the days are shorter.

The ride is smooth and comfortable with Air Conditioning!

Viewed from the Pike Place Market skybridge

Ticket card

Happy 50th!

Seattle's iconic Space Needle getting a coat of "Galaxy Gold" paint
for the fiftieth anniversary of its opening on April 21, 1962.

Above Seattle at Night

Nighttime approach into Seattle-Tacoma International Airport.

Seattle Waterfront

CenturyLink Stadium & Safeco Field
Port of Seattle
In the top left corner can be seen headlights on the I-90 floating bridge

Iconic Space Needle

CenturyLink Field

Port of Seattle

A visit to the Seattle Public Library

Besides being a sculpture in itself, the Seattle Public Library building is actually quite functional. At the time of my visit, snow had been falling for some time, adding an interesting element to the sloping windows.

The boat-like appearance is an artifact of this distorted image.
The building is really square.
(another view)

Escalators provide express access to upper levels.

Book shelves are arranged in a roughly helical space in the core of the building.
The floor ahead slopes upward. Walking once around rises a level.

Huge open windowed spaces characterize the periphery of the building.

Oddly angled window walls offer spectacular views of the city all around.

Snow accumulated in the diamond-shaped windows adds an interesting texture.

Seattle Skyline in Sunset Light & Sea-based X-band Radar

Updated July 25, 2011

Click image for larger version

In case you're wondering what that huge golf ball is on the right side of this image, that is the U.S. Missile Defense Agency’s Boeing-built Sea-Based X-band Radar. This bizarre object is actually a ship. The dome houses a remarkably powerful and precise radar system that can track something the size of a baseball thousands of miles away. At a cost in the neighborhood of one billion dollars, this mobile radar facility is designed to track missiles, not baseballs. It is in port in Seattle for several months undergoing a variety of power and redundancy upgrades.

More information [SeattlePI].

After reading about this monster, I realized I had seen it before.

Aerial view on approach into Seattle/Tacoma International airport

Aerial on departure from Honolulu International Airport

A closer view

From shuttle boat en route to the USS Arizona Memorial at Pearl Harbor

A closer view from the shuttle boat

Back in Hawaii November 26, 2012, viewed from Blaisdell Park

Qwest Field is Becoming CenturyLink Field

Crews have begun to paint CenturyLink logo art on top of Qwest Field

A ground-level view a few days later. "CenturyLink" is now fully in place.

All done

Quichua Mashis

 

Information on Quichua Mashis

Distorted Space (Needle)

The Space Needle distorted by EMP

Stainless in Seattle

"Split"
(Stainless Steel Tree)
Roxy Paine [Wikipedia]
Olympic Sculpture Park [Seattle Art Museum]
Seattle, WA

Seattle Central Library