Full Deck - Antique Cards -- Scenes Along the Railway - C M St P Ry

Don't OD on this, but, yes, we've got the full deck for you right here, including the box.  "53 Different Views -- Along the C. M. & St. P. Ry Puget Sound Lines -- Souvenir Playing Cards."  Published by The Inter-State News Company.

Before we present the cards, let us set the scene ...

Imagine you were aboard a transcontinental train travelling between Chicago and Seattle in, say, sometime between 1909 and 1915. You might have been on this very train ...

(Click on picture for larger view)

The image above is from a brochure published by the railroad called "Comforts of Travel" and we will be showing you the entire brochure on a future post. The railroad is the Chicago, Milwaukee, and St. Paul, (C M & St P) and the train is travelling the transcontinental route that in later years became known as the Milwaukee Road. Today, it is no longer in business and most of the steel rails in the western part of the line have been removed.  But let us continue to set the scene ...  To pass some time as you journeyed west, how about a game of solitaire? Perhaps that is what the gentleman (with arrow) is doing in the photo below ...

The photo is from the same brochure and the set of cards he is using could very well be this very set we are showing you below ... we do not, of course, know that, but we do know that this card set was used on those trains during those times.  The great thing about this is the cards you were playing with would have scenes on them showing what you'll see from the train's windows as your trip unfolds.  So take a look ...

Thanks for stopping by John's Island.

Sky Art -- August 2nd -- Clouds

Saturday, August 2, 2014. After a day punctuated with thunderstorms, clouds in the evening sky produced some of nature's art during sunset.

No zoom on this one for an overview

Thank you for stopping by John's Island.

Seattle Stairway Walk #1 - Solstice Park

We recently browsed the selection of Seattle books at the University Book Store (in the U District near the University of Washington main campus). We found an interesting book:  Seattle Stairway Walks by Jake Jaramillo and Cathy Jaramillo. From the back cover:  "Seattle Stairway Walks tackles 25 hikes in 25 different neighborhoods." John would like to increase his walking and this seemed to be an interesting way of going about it. So, on Tuesday, July 29th, we set out to do our first of these stairway walks, we'll call it #1, and it is 1 mile in length and takes about 45 minutes at a leisurely pace. This walk is focused on Solstice Park, which we had never even heard of. The description sounded interesting:  A spot where someone has placed some stones into the ground at a point with a sweeping view of the western horizon. The stones are supposed to point out the location of sunset on summer and winter solstice, and fall and spring equinox. We will have to return on one of those date to see how accurate the stone are, and, yes, we say that with a smile. Now, here are our pictures taken during the walk. By the way, this was a fine summer day, warm with clear blue skies.

Solstice Park is on the left.
Enter stairs just ahead (in the shade).

Stairway into the Park

Cross this bridge, after doing the stairs,
and enter the open area straight ahead.

Overall view of part of the Park showing the
stones which designate spots for sunsets on
solstice and equinox days.

Summer Solstice rock.
We are not sure what the various marks indicate ...
more research needed.

A picnic table and bench are in the area to the south.

Various wild flowers seen along the walk ...

This is such a curious flower. At first, we thought the black
marks were wings of a bug. No, that is a part of the flower!

Lots of this ... we think it's wild sweet peas.
Not sure though.

Extreme close up from the flower above.
The world of "small" is amazing, isn't it?

Thanks for stopping by John's Island.

Rain In The Face -- Sioux Native American

Rain In The Face -- Sioux

In today's post we are getting back to our collection of antique postcards. John really likes these old portraits of Native Americans. This one is Rain-In-The-Face, a member of the Sioux tribe. This card is in excellent unused condition. At the bottom of the image side: "Copyrighted 1904 by F. A. Rinehart, Omaha, Neb."

We did find another one of these cards on the web that was mailed in 1905. That web post contains the following additional info about Rain-In-The-Face:  "Rain in the Face, a member of the Hunkpapa Sioux, was born near Cheyenne River, North Dakota, in 1835. After the Battle with General Custer's Troops at Little Big Horn, he moved north with Sitting Bull into Canada. Rain in the Face remained there until 1880, when he decided to surrender to the American authorities at Fort Koegh, Montana. Rain in the Face died at the Standing Rock Reservation on Sept. 14, 1905."

What we don't know is who the artist was. If you know, please leave us a comment.

This card is unused and in excellent condition.

Thank you for stopping by John's Island.

Weather Update

We had some unusual clouds in the area this morning. Cumulonimbus cloud formations are not common here in Western Washington, although very common in most of the USA in summer. Description from Wiki ... "Cumulonimbus, from the Latin cumulus ("heap") and nimbus ("rainstorm", "storm cloud"), is a dense towering vertical cloud associated with thunderstorms and atmospheric instability, forming from water vapor carried by powerful upward air currents." We might further refine our thoughts here by saying that it really isn't that unusual to have these clouds at this specific time of year. We are currently in the warmest period of the year based on historical records.

Looking southwest from our location
in downtown Seattle

Classic "anvil head" cloud forming over
Columbia Center
(tallest skyscraper in Seattle)

Journey South -- Costa Rica -- Coffee Tour

Please enjoy our tour of a coffee plantation and roasting business in Costa Rica.

Dates and links to previous posts in this series on our Journey South ...

March 26 -- Introduction

March 29 -- Aruba

April 18 -- Cartagena

June 29 -- Costa Rican Sunset

In a future post we will cover the last two port stops in our journey.

Followers and visitors, cut us a little slack today ... this is our first attempt at a slideshow via YouTube. It leaves something to be desired ... namely better technical expertise on our end ... but we like the ability to give you a little information about each photo without using captions. For some reason, here on blogspot, captions we put with photos may or may not show up on the device you are using to surf the web. So far, we haven't figured out the exact criteria. Anyway, we will work on this slideshow business. Getting the time for each slide to show to agree with the length of the narration is indeed possible, but we haven't perfected that in this video. Also, we notice that if we view this video on a mobile device, the video may seem of lower quality than when we watch on the desktop here on the desktop. Surely there are reasons for that, and we just don't know what they are. Ha ha. Gotta luv this technology! Thank you for stopping by John's Island.

Update -- Today's (August 1) colorful sunrise ...

Looking north, the north Cascades and Mount Baker in the far distance ...

Slightly later, clouds starting to glow ...