Full Moon Over the Space Needle
Today was a moving day. We originally planned to drive directly to Olympic National Park from Mt. Rainier, but while I was experimenting with my astrophotography apps, I discovered that the nearly-full moon would rise shortly before sunset and be directly over the Space Needle about 9:00. Sunset was at 8:53, so there seemed to be great possibilities. We found a Best Western in Tumwater, WA, that had space to park the motorhome and made arrangements with our campground outside Port Angeles to come in a day later. We would check in early at the Best Western and drive to Kerry Park just above downtown Seattle before the traffic got awful. We thought we had a perfect plan.
We made great time from Mt. Rainier to Tumwater, and reached the hotel about noon. We had asked for an early check-in, but they said they were full the previous night and they'd call us when our room was ready. We ate a leisurely lunch--no call. We filled up Ruby (our Explorer) with fuel--no call. We bought groceries--still no call. It was after 3:00 and the normal check-in time and they still didn't have our room ready. We finally got into our room at 3:30 and left almost immediately for Seattle (65 miles away). We reached downtown Seattle at 5:10. Ouch!
We got to Kerry Park
about 6:00 and found a perfect parking place right next to the park but out of the traffic pattern of people coming and going.
Then we had 2 hours to kill. We read, checked out the view, and watched the people. We noticed that lots of people had ice cream cones. Carol used Google
to discover that Molly Moon's homemade ice cream was only about 3 blocks away. How can you turn down homemade ice cream? Molly Moon's was in a quaint neighborhood,
had friendly staff, and the ice cream was amazing. It was a warm day, and Molly Moon's was very popular.
By the time we walked back to Kerry Park, it was time to lay claim to tripod space along the railing overlooking Seattle. It's a good thing we returned when we did. As sunset approached, the park was packed with people waiting for the show. The moon rose shortly before 8:00 and by 8:30 the sunset light created enough contrast that the rising moon shown clearly as it arced toward the Space Needle. At 9:07, it was directly above the blinking light at the top of the Space Needle. I love shooting moonrise, but my favorite shots from tonight were taken of the city lights and the Space Needle about 9:30. There was still a little sunset light reflecting off some of the buildings, and the sky was a dark, purplish-blue.
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We finished shooting about 9:45, but didn't get back to the hotel until about 12:30. It was too late to get anything to eat, and we were too tired to care.
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