Olympia Harbor Days 2024 (Oly 14)

Percival Landing, West Bay, Olympia

Olympians love their boats! and they seriously celebrate holidays, events, and themes. Olympia Harbor Days is a waterfront fête with vintage tugboats, foods, harbor tours, and children's booths. As the official web page states: 

"The Olympia Harbor Days Festival, a free event offered every Labor Day Weekend, is an award winning free and family friendly event that showcases many of the vintage tugboats of the Puget Sound with a walk aboard show at the docks and races in the bay.  Visitors to the event may also find tall ships, steamships, other historic vessels of twentieth century commerce, tribal canoes, and current recreational small watercraft.  Harbor crises and sailings on Budd Bay are also offered.

On land, festival attendees enjoy great food, great music, great artisans, plus nautical and marine themed attractions, and hands on activities, including Olympia’s tugboat heritage, tribal history and the working waterfront with Port of Olympia tours.  All in all, here are over 300 things to do and see." 

World War II era US Navy rescue tug, Comanche, later US Coast Guard 

The Comanche is a sturdy old navy tug, launched in 1943. I want onboard before the start of Harbor Days and spent an hour listening to two former crewmen relate stories. This old-timer needs a lot of maintenance and overhauling. It was powerful enough to tow aircraft carriers.

The big draw of Harbor Days is the famous tugboat race. This begins on Sunday with a processions of the tugs out of Percival Landing. The procession seemed a bit ad hoc, more like an occasional tug chugging north into West Bay. The actual race was too far north for us to see. 

Tug R. W. Confer

The R. W. Confer, built in 1930 in Portland, Oregon, towed logs on the Columbia River for 70 years.

  

Tug Chippewa 

This is a gorgeous restoration of a 1943 wooden tug. Tug Chippewa was built in Seattle and originally served as a Navy tug during WWII, patrolling Puget Sound. The Foss company later used it for service between Seattle and Alaska.

TugZilla, small but mighty

The tugs came from different original work environments, such as Puget Sound and the Colombia River. The Comanche, above, was ocean-going and operated on the Atlantic Coast as well as across the Pacific. Maintaining one of these old work boats is a serious financial commitment.

The Duplo marine engineer

Yacht skippers

Remote control sailing is a popular activity here. I see a group at Swantown Marine every Sunday. 

 

The Saga Beija Flor unloaded tons of Brazilian eucalyptus pulp paper for use by American paper companies to convert into toilet paper and paper towels. Your joy roll might have come from this vessel. The Port of Olympia offered walking tours of the secure area of the Port. This is a deep draft harbor, but the next dredging will be postponed until the City of Olympia addresses the contaminated sediment (much of it from creosote operations that extended over a hundred years). I took some Rolleiflex film pictures in the secure area, which you will see in the future.

These photographs are from my Fuji X-E1 digital camera with the 18-55mm Fuji lens. I use the Astia simulation. This is an "old" digital camera on current standards, but I seldom use it and have not seen a need to change it. 

Remembering the Mist (Oly 12)

Summer in Olympia is spectacular. Day after day of cool nights, warm mornings, and warm-hot late afternoons. The humidity is low, especially compared to when I previously lived. We had one or two days of 100º F temperature here, but that passed, and since then, the temperatures have been more benign. Some mornings are overcast, but the clouds burn off, and the sky is blazing blue. When I see news reports that much of the US south and southwest is under extreme heat advisories, I am glad to be in the Northwest. 

But after week after week of sunshine, do you want to remember the mist and fog of winter? Let's try with these random January and February views around town.

  

Seldom-used rail line to Port of Olympia, next to Dancing Goats Coffee (Jan. 20, 2024)

This is the track that comes down Jefferson Street and then makes some minor changes as it heads north to the Port. I think it has not been active for some time because the rails are rusty in stretches where cars do not drive over it. But a Port of Olympia manager told me that this line is officially still in operation.  

 

Awaiting tender loving care at Swantown Boatworks

East Bay pilings

Pilings, south end of East Bay

East Bay Drive NE view west

512 East Bay Drive NE. There are some other black-painted houses around the city. 

View from the balcony - Swantown Marina and Port of Olympia

When the sun bursts through in early spring, the light is magical here. The woods glow.

Chehalis Western trail near Woodard Bay

What to do after a long walk exploring and photographing and you need a snack? Go to Bread Peddler for a Café au Lait, a croissant, and some Édith Piaf (aka. "La Môme Piaf"). And I asked: they use butter imported from France.

The Bread Peddler, 222 Capitol Way N. 

I took these photographs with my Fuji X-E1 digital camera with various lenses. I set the aspect ration to square to resemble Rolleiflex frames, and usually use the Astia film simulation. The RAW file contains the complete frame, but I rarely now reprocess the RAW file with Photo Ninja or other software. The jpeg files from this little Fuji usually look fine and are as good as I could achieve fooling around with various software packages. 

Into the Woods: Squaxin Park, Olympia, Washington (Oly 02)

Squaxin Park, formerly known as Priest Point Park, is a 314 acre oasis of big trees, mosses, and ferns just north of downtown Olympia on the east shore of Budd Inlet. The Steh-Chass (People of the Water)  settled this land for centuries, living in villages along the shores of Budd Inlet. In 1848, Catholic missionaries, the Oblate Fathers, came to the area with sponsorship or funding by the Hudson’s Bay Company. The Oblate Fathers displaced the Steh-Chass, cleared the land, and established the St. Joseph d’Olympia Mission and school. The Mission only lasted until 1860, after which the land lay idle for 45 years. In 1905, a group of land investors deeded some of the land to the City of Olympia to form a park. 

Priest Point Park, early 1910s (from City of Olympia)

The original park name was Priest Point, but the priests were only there for 12 years. Converting heathens must have proven a bit too difficult or not sufficiently lucrative.

The importance of this timeline is that the forest in the park has been largely undisturbed for about 150 years. This is not old growth forest but is as close as you will encounter near an urban area. The dense mosses, ferns, and towering tree trunks hint at what old growth forest must have looked like. Pockets of old growth or at least very old trees exist in the Olympic Peninsula, but Squaxin Park is closer and easier to reach (and it is only a 10 minute walk north of where I now live). 

Ellis Cove at low tide

Woods above Mission Creek

Dusk in Squaxin (1+ sec. exposure)

Trail to Ellis Cove

Rest area at Ellis Cove

I took these pictures with my little Fuji X-E1 digital camera and the compact 27mm ƒ/2.8 Fuji lens. I have not exercised this kit much in the last few years but need to refamiliarize myself with its functions. It is convenient and easy to use. For most of the pictures above, I used the Astia simulation and set the frame to 1:1 to resemble the square frame of a Rolleiflex. This crops off the edges, so you end up with fewer pixels in your files. One of the µ4/3 Panasonic cameras, the GH2, had a multi-aspect ratio sensor, so setting various frame sizes used different parts of the oversized sensor. But I think all current digital cameras simply chop off part of the frame. 

Digital is certainly convenient. The pictures are usually "sharp" (whatever that means), the exposure is usually decent, and the camera adjusts the white balance for many light conditions. You take pictures, go home, download the files, and you are ready to use them. I formerly would open the raw files and adjust them with software, but honestly, the jpeg files that the camera computes look fine for 8-bit web display. I never got into the use of Lightroom or developing a secret formula to manipulate the raw files.

Despite having used 4/3, µ4/3, APS, and compact digital cameras, I think the best digital files in my archives are from a 2005-vintage 10 mpixel Sony DSC R1 camera. Despite being "early" technology, the output was superb.

Mississippi Doors 02

Let's continue exploring Mississippi Doors. What lies behind? Anything interesting? Empty space? Snakes? Memories of long lost customers, children, and shop clerks? Will we ever know?

Rear of 325 Washington Avenue, Greenville

Rear of 323 Washington Avenue, Greenville

343 Washington Avenue, Greenville (Fuji X-E1 camera, 27mm Fuji lens)

Johl & Bergman Shoes once occupied this store. The handsome entrance featured dual doors and large plate glass windows to display their merchandise. Note the black marble panels.

Smith's Appliances, Vicksburg

Smith's Appliances on Magnolia Road in Vicksburg sells old machines, freezers, and odd treasures. It's fun to sniff around places like this. The owner has generously let me photograph inside.

Remnant of theater, 928 John R Lynch Street, Jackson (Fuji X-E1, 18mm ƒ/2 lens)

The theater is on a block of buildings that once were part of a thriving African-American commercial district. The Mississippi Heritage trust included the 900 block of John R. Lynch Street on its 2021 list of 10 Most Endangered Historic Places in Mississippi.

Former YMCA Club, Monroe Street, Vicksburg (Kodak Royal Gold 25 film, Leica M2, 35mm ƒ/2 Summicron lens). (Note: Royal Gold 25 was an astonishing film, but it gone forever)

The former YMCA on Clay Street in Vicksburg continues to deteriorate. Status: unknown. I photographed inside many times in the past.

Hallway in St. Francis Xavier Convent, Vicksburg (Kodachrome 25 film)

The St. Fancis Xavier Convent is now part of the Southern Cultural Heritage Center. This building was home to the nuns who ran the school and helped operate the hospital for over 100 years. Most of the convent building is unused now, but the roof has been repaired to prevent water damage. 

Demolition of 915 Clay Street, Vicksburg (Moto G5 phone)

This was a late 1800s wood building broken up into 5 or 6 apartments. In 2021, I saw that part of the roof had collapsed, which foretold the eventual condemning of the structure. It was demolished in 2022.

 

Deconstructed church, 1205 MLK Blvd., Vicksburg

Someone took apart this little church on Martin Luther King Blvd. I do not know if they recycled the wood or rebuilt the church in another location.

Warehouse, Railroad Avenue, Hazelhurst

Oops, I could not resist, a door from Fells Point, Baltimore Inner Harbor, Maryland.

Fells Point, Maryland

This ends out short tour of the mysteries of doors. Thank you all for reading.

Semi-Demolished 1800s House on Clay Street, Vicksburg, Mississippi

Kodak Super-XX film, 135mm ƒ/5.6 Caltar-S II lens

Kodak Super-xx film, 90mm ƒ/6.8 Angulon lens, 1/2 at ƒ/22.5

Two tall wood houses formerly stood on the north side of Clay Street in downtown Vicksburg just west of the former Clay & LaHatte Appliance store. The west-most house (the grassy lot in the foreground of the photograph above) formerly housed Ocean and Coastal Technologies, a marine engineering company. That building suffered a fire and was demolished about 15 years ago. The second house at 915 was a rental unit with five or six apartments. The roof was collapsing as of 2021 and possibly earlier. That sealed its fate. One day in early summer of 2022, I saw a work crew at the house and I knew the house's demise was ongoing.

I like the old-fashioned front door with the lights to either side and a transom above. I hope the demolition company saved it for reuse. 

View west from Cherry Street.

Time to cook dinner

The original demolition crew stopped work part way through their project. The partly-deconstructed remnants of the house lingered for about 6 months. Then, in early September, heavy equipment crushed the rest. As of October 1, 2022, the house was entirely gone. 

The next building uphill (to the east) was the former home of Wells & LaHatte appliances. They have moved across the street to a larger building. This handsome sign is a classic.

We have lost many other Victorian-era houses. One example that I photographed in 2017 was on Finney Street. Smaller cottages (e.g., on Martin Luther King, Jr., Blvd.) are also being demolished as they decay. 

This is how Vicksburg loses its architectural heritage. 

I took the color frames with my Fuji X-E1 digital camera. The Fuji lenses all have excellent resolution. The two black and white photographs are from 4×5" Kodak Super-XX film that I took with my Tachihara wood field camera.

Pinar del Río and the Western Hills, Cuba

2023 Introduction

Dear Readers, I hope you all have a happy, healthy, and prosperous 2023. For new readers, welcome and please come back regularly. 

Over the next few months, I want to review some of the photographs in my archives. Later in the year you will see Houston, Wales, Greece, more Mississippi, Romania, and various other places. I have so many negatives in boxes, I will never finish scanning them. And I get enthusiastic when I see new interesting decay and take new pictures (mostly using film now). Then I get even further behind on looking over old negatives.

I started this blog in 2010, with no particular plan or ending date.

Some statistics:

• Total articles: 688
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• Abandoned Rocket Fuel Plant, Redlands, California
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Note that I do not have any commercial advertising here or any of the links where you click to buy some product and I get a minor payoff. I consider pop-ups and advertising cheesy, irritating, and an insult to my readers. 

Cuba

Let us return to the archives with Cuba, as good a place as any to start. My wife and I toured western Cuba in early 2017. Type "Cuba" in the search box to see older articles. 

Pinar del Río is a charming provincial capitol of Pinar del Río Province, the westernmost province in Cuba. The architecture jumps out at you with the brilliant colors and ornate neoclassical architectural details. I'd love to spend a month in these smaller towns exploring and photographing. 

Room with a view

After looking around Pinar del Río, we headed into the hills to the west for an all-to-short overnight at a spectacular biosphere reserve. 

Room with a view, Las Terrazas, Vinales

Las Terrazas

Las Terrazas is situated in the limestone hills of Vinales. It's a charming setting. We saw Belted Kingfishers on trees around the lake. Part of the region is a UNESCO biosphere reserve.

Las Terrazas es una pequeña comunidad turística rural de desarrollo sostenible que te ofrece un entorno único en el conectar con la naturaleza. Situada a 75 kilómetros al oeste de La Habana, este lugar forma parte de la Sierra del Rosario, catalogada por la UNESCO como Reserva de la Biosfera en 1985.

These photographs are from a January 2017 trip to Cuba. We all had a wonderful time and everyone we met was friendly and welcoming. The Covid shut-down must have been devastating to Cuba's tourist industry, coupled with churlish restrictions on American visits that the Trump administration imposed. Regardless, as travel opens up, go visit Cuba! Go before the developers ruin it. It is a photographic paradise.

Type "Cuba"or "Havana" in the search box to see other articles on Cuba.