Portland, Oregon

We had a bit of an extended stop in Portland, Oregon. It wasn't long enough to wander around too far but long enough, I guess.

This is Portland as we were coming into the station. Unfortunately, it seems like many of the train stations aren't in the nicer sections of town, so not the best picture.

This was a sculpture, from this angle it reminded me of an origami piece.

Union Station in Portland. This was one of the old stations renovated for modern use. It seems that there are a ton of Union Stations in the country.

Looking up at the tower.

A long shot of the Coast Starlight.

Coast Starlight - Part 1

The next part of my trip was on the Coast Starlight, which goes from Seattle down to Los Angeles. I would only be taking it to Emeryville (near San Francisco) though. The route is based on routes that were run by the Southern Pacific Railroad back in the day.

This is one of the Boeing factories. I wish I had my camera ready just before we were leaving Seattle because I saw some plane bodies heading down to one of the Boeing plants.

This is another shot of the factory. This plane is the P-8 which is going to replace the P-3 Orion.

The bridge nearest was built in 1950 to replace the famous Tacoma Narrows Bridge that ended up collapsing into the river in 1940. The other bridge was added in 2007 to relieve traffic on the first bridge. When they did that, they made eastbound traffic go on one bridge and westbound on the other.

A shot as we were passing between the bridges.

Leaving the bridges.

I'm not sure what island this is but I thought it was pretty neat.

The Olympia-Lacey train station. This is one of the classic stations that is still used.

Centralia, Washington.

A railroad bridge. You can see the train entering the bridge.

The St. John's Bridge in Portland. This bridge is slightly north of the city and was built in 1931.

Leaving Seattle

Sadly, it became time to leave Seattle. When I planned this trip, I knew that I would be upset that I wasn't going to spend more time in the cities I was going to. But the main part of my trip was the train trip, 2 days in Seattle was gravy in my books.

This is a shot of the inside of the station. There are plans to renovate the station to it's full glory. This is one of the sad parts of rail travel in this country. The rail companies built all these really nice depots but as rail travel declined, so did the stations. When Amtrak took over, in many cases they had to build new depots because the old ones were so deteriorated. It is pretty nice that many cities are starting to renovate their stations.

This is the ticket counter.

This is the Coast Starlight as we are preparing to board. It is also another one of the double decker trains and had quite a lot of space for the seats.

Pictures of Seattle

These were just some random pictures as I was walking around Seattle. It is a pretty photogenic city with some pretty nice buildings. There is also a nice mix of modern and old buildings and it seems like they try to keep the older buildings in somewhat decent shape.

This was a bank of shops.

This is one of the friezes on a building. One thing I like when I take pictures is to get pictures of details.

Another of my favorite shots is reflections of buildings in other buildings.

A shot of downtown Seattle from the south.

Seattle's King Street Station. This is where my train came in.

A firefighter's memorial.

A shot from another angle.

I really liked this statue because it was 1-1 scale.

A totem pole.

Another pole.

Looking up at one of the neater looking buildings.

Another frieze.

Seattle at night.



This restaurant was near my hotel. Another shot I love is neon.

Detroit Tigers Vs. Seattle Mariners

Another highlight of my trip to Seattle was a game at Safeco Field. I love baseball and wanted to see if I could get tickets to a game while I was there. It turned out that I could and it also turned out that it was going to be against the Tigers, which was doubly good.

Safeco is one of the newer stadiums in the Major League. It follows the pattern of stadiums to be more like old time stadiums. One major difference is that this one has a retractable roof (something they should have considered for Comerica). Anyways...

Here are the managers exchanging lineup cards.

This is one of the Tigers making contact with the ball.

Getting back to first after an attempted pick off.

The Seattle pitcher.

Verlander, one of the Tigers better pitchers.

Ichiro making a catch. Despite the fact that he plays for the Mariners, Ichiro is one of my favorite players.

Ichiro trying to make a hit (he ended up getting an out).

Brandon Inge as he hits a home run.

Johnny Damon trying to get a hit.

Almost an out.

A shot of a hit.

Joel Zumaya.

At about the third inning, it started to rain so I got to see the closing of the roof. Unfortunately, the rain did not make for good pictures as my lens was fogged up.

The Tigers ended up losing 5-3.

The Gold Rush Museum

Another interesting place was the Gold Rush Museum.

Because of it's location, Seattle was a good place for people to get equipped for the gold rush up in Alaska. Therefore it played an important role in that exploration. One of the neatest things in the museum (which I unfortunately didn't take a picture of) was a wheel you could spend which simulated your chances of striking it rich.

This is simulated group of gold bricks.

The Seattle Metropolitan Police Museum

I took the bus back from the Flight Museum and then decided to step off to wander the town a little bit. One of the places my wandering took me was the Seattle Metropolitan Police Museum. It was a pretty interesting place.

As Seattle grew from a frontier town to a proper town, it needed a better police force and this place showed the growth.

A detective gun.

One of the police hats.

A service revolver and some of the badges.