Bellingham, 1–2 June
Melody’s brother and his wife are both professional musicians, so it makes sense that their kids are, too. Their son, Kenny, is studying music at Western Washington University in Bellingham, and we were able to go to his Junior Recital last weekend. We decided to make a mini-trip out of it and spent the night.
The recital was in the evening, so we started driving north after lunch. We checked into our motel, dropped off our stuff, then headed downtown. Our first stop was the SPARK Museum of Electrical Invention.
SPARK Museum
The SPARK museum is pretty small in square footage, but they squeeze a lot into the space. For some of the items, it’s pretty amazing they were able to procure them, such as one of the first wireless telephones, a shoe-fitting fluoroscope (a machine that used X-rays on feet to help with fitting shoes), one of the first dial telephones, and one of the first screw-base electric light bulbs.
Once we were done walking through the museum, we went into the theater for electrical demonstrations. The presenter started with magnets and static electricity. He vigorously rubbed a couple of balloons on a young girl’s hair. He then moved onto a Van de Graaff generator, which is a metal ball on top of a metal cylinder. A woman from the audience put her hand on it, then when he turned the generator on, her hair stood straight out. He had the woman’s husband wave a wand around her hair to dissipate the charge, and her hair started going back down.
Next up was a small Tesla coil, which he used to light up some compact fluorescent bulbs, as well as some fluorescent tubes. Next, he put a glass jar over one set and a cage over the other, showing that the electricity from the Tesla coil flows through glass but can’t get through the cage, which was a Faraday cage.
He then moved onto a much larger Tesla coil, which could generate 4.6 million volts (compared to about 1.2 million volts for the one at the Griffith Observatory) and generated visible bolts which projected several feet. There was a large Faraday cache that could be rolled near the Tesla coil, large enough to hold people. You could pay to be in the cage when the coil was energized, but at the beginning of the show there was a drawing for someone to go in for free. As it happened, Melody had the winning ticket, so we went inside. The presenter said that we could put our hands on the inside of the cage to direct the bolts, but it didn’t seem to work for us. Could be we didn’t have enough of our hands on the metal.
Around downtown
We often try to go to local ice cream or gelato shops, and since we knew that Mallard's wasn't very far, we went there. There was no line when we arrived, but by the time we were sitting down there were several people waiting for their ice cream.
Next, we went to the South Bay Trail to stretch our legs. It runs between Western Washington University and Bellingham Bay, and we didn't run across all that many people. The access to Boulevard Park was closed, so we turned around just before reaching that point and went to find dinner. We ended up having crab noodles at a Thai restaurant at the edge of the Fairhaven neighborhood.
Concert
Figuring we might need to look around a bit for parking, we showed up to campus a bit early, scoring a spot on the street right at the north side of campus. When we arrived, Bev was setting up food for afterward, and we all went into the hall. The WWU Department of Fine and Performing Arts put up a video of the recital.
Kenny did great. The first piece was just him with piano, so his playing was very exposed. The second piece was for trombone and tuba and had four backing trombones (one a bass trombone). The last piece was him with tuba and French horn (he had performed the piece before for one of the other participants' recital).
All through, Kenny did seem to be enjoying himself, especially considering that he must have been at least a little nervous.
It was fun to chat with people afterwards while snacking. Once that was done, we said our goodbyes and headed back to our room.
Kenny during his recital
Whatcom Falls Park
The next morning, we had breakfast, checked out of the motel, and headed towards Whatcom Falls Park, which is near Lake Whatcom. We had found a trail that went to both the far east and west points of the park in a bit over four miles, so we mostly followed that. Going to the east, we walked along Derby Pond, then over to Scudder's Pond, which was filled with reeds and pond lilies.
Going back to the west, we were along Whatcom Creek for most of the trail, and there were several small waterfalls. We came upon the largest in the park, Whatcom Falls. I was able to scramble down a bit to walk out to the top of the falls. Across from the falls was a WPA-built stone bridge, which we would be crossing later.
We went a bit away from the creek to continue to the west side of the park, which included a stairway to get us down to the same elevation as Iowa Street. On the way back, we went back along the creek and came across Whirlpool Falls, which looks like a miniature version of Horseshoe Falls at Niagara. We then got to Stone Bridge and got more views of Whatcom Falls. After going up the walkway, we were back at the car.
It was just about lunchtime when we were leaving, so we stopped by Bow to a bakery to get something to eat. We ended up with danishes, one with asparagus, one with potatoes and cheese, and one with rhubarb. We also got a koign-amann since it's hard to pass those up when we see them. We ended up saving the rhubarb danish for home, but everything else disappeared quickly.
