A Brief History…

I have been visiting Seattle since my first trip there in 1959. At the time it was a pretty city but not too prosperous. The saying at the time was that “If Boeing gets a cold, Seattle catches pneumonia.” Boeing was the only large employer. Now, it has Microsoft and Amazon and a bunch of internet spinoffs.

In 1987, I bought five acres on Vashon-Maury Island. Actually the two islands are connected by a man made isthmus called “The Portage.” My lot was on Maury Island and I later bought a lot next to it so that my property was ten acres. It had a well that I owned two shares of five and there was a large storage tank that serviced the only structure, a house next door. I owned those lots for ten or twelve yrears, always anticipating moving there in retirement. I had an architect named Nora Jaso, who was going to design a custom home. The property had 60 blue heron nests on one corner and I agreed to make that portion a preserve. This photo may be of that rookery.

ACross the street, 248th street, there was a gravel quarry which is now a park.

I sold the ten acres in two parcels about 15 years ago and wish I had kept at least one. Now, I am looking at the island again.

The island is reached only by ferry boat. There is a ferry landing at each end of the island. The north end terminal serves West Seattle and then Seattle across a bridge. The south terminal serves Tacoma.

Here is a photo taken from the ferry on the way over.

The north ferry terminal is under repair and this view shows it as I was waiting to go back to Seattle.

Here is a view of “downtown Vashon” which does not have a stoplight.

I had lunch at a cute restaurant called “The Hardware Store” which is about at the spot the camera is in that photo.

I talked to a real estate lady who showed me two houses, one of which we went through in detail. Houses on Vashon are not cheap.

We looked at a small house on the island which I liked a lot but we are months from any decision to move there. That is the view from that house.

Here is that house. It is two bedrooms and one and one/half baths but quite nicely finished inside.

We will go up again in a couple of months when we are back from Alaska. We also looked around Oregon near where Rick lives.

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 14th, 2016 at 11:25 am and is filed under personal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.