Tuesday, June 27, 2017

Washington State Capitol

Legislative Building
We've been in Washington for a month now and the focus has been on family. We've been helping with grandchildren since the new little guy is causing sleep deprivation in his parents and lack of attention for big sister. We've become very adept at taking orders from a 3 year old on how to play her imagination games.

Capitol Lake from Judicial building

On one day off we visited the Washington State Capitol in Olympia, the first capitol for 2017 after visiting 13 last year on our eastern trip. The Capitol is made up of multiple buildings with the Legislative Building housing the legislative branches and neighboring buildings holding the Judicial branch and library. The Legislative Building has lots of marble with the rotunda having a pretty dome and a huge Tiffany chandelier. The chandelier is so large a Mini Cooper would fit inside it. The House and Senate chambers have some pretty ornamentation without being garish like other Capitols we've seen.
Dome from Rotunda

Reception room

We also took a day trip from our base in Elma to Port Townsend, a town on the northern tip of the Olympic Peninsula. This historic town has a lot of nice buildings from the late 1800s and a nice state park with beaches. We spent a couple hours just walking around checking out the buildings and reading plaques. I didn't take any pictures for some reason, I guess the weather was so dark and gloomy I just wasn't inspired for photography that day.

Old Washington State Capitol