Volunteer Park: A Green Oasis Among Many

In trying to stay generally with the literal time span of our trip, we took a trip to Capitol Hill neighborhood before leaving for Ballard and football with the guys. Our destination there: Volunteer Park. This park was designed by Olmstead, the designer of New York's Central Park and the Chicago's World's Fair in 1893 among other projects.

I've heard that there is a municipal decree in Seattle that states that all neighborhoods must have a park, or that every house needs to be within a minimum distance to a park...or something. In any case, there are a great many parks available to the resident and casual visitor alike.

Volunteer Park has a cool water tower that provides great views of the surrounding areas. But before we could get up into the water tower, we had to take the bus to the park. We passed the site for the Occupy Seattle demonstration:



At the park I thought it was cool how the receding shadows shows the melting pattern for the morning's frost:



There's a sculpture up that frames the Space Needle:



Here's the water tower, which doesn't resemble normal water towers. The brick surrounds a metal cylinder almost as wide as the facade:



Of the many views from the tower one is the Needle:



And, last but certainly not least, looming in the distance, our first sight of this sucker, constantly threatening the metropolitan area, the volcano Mt. Ranier:



I was excited to see Ranier for the first time. Me and volcanoes go way back.