An honorable place
Trip Start
Jan 01, 1975
1
12
51
Trip End
Jan 01, 2010
Olympia,
Washington,
United States
Thursday, February 1, 1990
I don't remember the year I was first there but I do remember an interesting visit for a conference in 1990; and committee meetings for the two years I represented the University to the Office of Financial Management (UW is the 5th largest state agency); and then the trips I made to testify before the committee when working with OFM to get a BILL introduced and turned into a LAW! I still have my souvenir pen from when Governor Booth Gardener changed
MY proposal into a LAW. So I KNOW that ordinary people can bring about change. I have done so.
It was also very touching the time my Vietnamese co-worker Thuy and I drove to Olympia for a ballet performance and toured the capitol grounds - she pointed out to me that the Vietnam memorial has a cutout that is the outline of her country as she told me of her nighttime escape in a tiny boat with her three small children (hoping the baby wouldn't cry), her rescue by a British freighter as the children were roped up one by one in stormy seas, and her eventual relocation to the United States. Yes, I love Olympia. Even the name is honorable.
Facts:
Washington was the FORTY-SECOND state.
Date: November 11, 1889
State Nickname: Evergreen State
Key Words: mountains, inlet, Rainier, Olympic, oysters, elk
A territorial legislature convened here in 1854, when Olympia was capital of the land that eventually became the states of Oregon and Washington. Those were dangerous times - a 15-foot stockade surrounded the town because of Native American unrest. Later, that wall was dismantled and the lumber used to pave the streets!
Olympia is surrounded by natural beauty, with Mt Rainier and the Olympic Mountains on its skyline and Puget Sound at its doorstep. The elaborately detailed capitol, which has a 287-foot dome topped by a 47-foot lantern, sits in a 35-acre park overlooking Capitol Lake and Budd Inlet. On the grounds are Japanese cherry trees and many fountains.
The rare Olympia oyster lives in beds nearby named Big Skookum, Little Skookum, Mud and Oyster. Tumwater Falls Park has trails along the Deschutes River; Olympic National Forest is 630,000 acres of rivers, ridges, peaks, canyons, and Douglas fir, with a large herd of Roosevelt elk.
Olympia Washington
Population 43,519
Elevation 100
Pacific time zone
