Half full

In Tacoma now, on the home straight, with more than 1200 miles behind us (and considerably more than that ahead). There's a storm on the way, rolling in from the sea - but not quite yet, although it's finally cloudy and damp the way it's meant to be here. So we weren't able to see Mt Rainier as we drove through White Pass, or the glaciers that this artwork by Dale Chihuly represents.

We did have a lovely lunch in Eatonville, at Jebino's which is unexpectedly themed on the Rat Pack - and done with great enthusiasm and conviction too, as with all the themed places we've come across in our circuit. Good for them, to have a passion, and to pursue it.

Tacoma's delights have been limited by time for us to just the Washington State History Museum (history lite, with lots of hands-on things, verbal testimonies and re-enactments, but no punches pulled about less savoury aspects, such as the treatment of Chinese labourers, the drowning of Celilo Falls and Hanford's contribution to the end of the war - the plutonium for the Nagasaki A-bomb was made there).

Over the lovely Glass Bridge, the Museum of Glass is full of wonderful things, marvels of inspiration and construction, the best of it an installation opened just today; a frozen forest of clear glass trees and bushes with an icy mirror-glass stream winding through it. Just beautiful, and especially amazing as it was made simultaneously in Sweden and Wisconsin, co-ordinated over the internet. I would have liked to take a photo, but the guard said no - shamelessly, hypocritically, because I'd caught him doing exactly that when he thought there was no-one looking.

So here's part of the Chihuly Glass Bridge, which would look fabulous in sunshine, or lit up at night.