MJ and I rode together on the way back, because we wanted to stop at the Maryhill Museum. It's a nice little museum with a splendid collection of Native American artefacts, a permanent exhibit to Loie Fuller the dancer, a collection of Rodin sculpture, and a collection of artefacts donated by Queen Marie of Roumania, including the dress she wore to the Czar's coronation, and a replica of her own coronation crown. And, my very favorite, Theatre DeLaMode, a collection of 1/3 size French fashion mannequins which were constructed and dressed by the famous French designers right after WWII. Due to rationing, they couldn't get the fabric for full-scale garments to showcase their new lines, but they wanted to show the world that haute coutre was still alive, so they made these scale model ensembles. The tiny shoes and gloves and hats - the exquisite tailoring, the meticulously matched lines on the minature plaids - I am in awe! I hav visited them three times now, and am constantly seeing something new.

The Maryhill Museum was originally built as a home for 19th century entepreneur, Sam Hill, and is a notable edifice perched high above the Columbia. Sam wanted to establish a utopia of sorts in Yakima County, bought some quite good land down by the river, and invited a bunch of his fellow Quakers to come and farm it. They declined, and there was Sam, with a mansion, and no happy peasants to lord it over. He went to Europe, met Queen Marie, (and Loie Fuller - who was no better than she should be!) and invited them to visit him in Washington. Eventually, they did. But the land development scheme never did get off the ground. He dedicated the house as a museum, and it finally opened to the public six years after his death.


The land below the mansion - Peach beach. Wonderful place for fruit trees, now given over to grapes.








-The mansion grounds are beautifully landscaped, full of sculptures - -

-- - and infested with peacocks. The males hang around in the bushes and scream, and the females hang out in the parking lot, cadging handouts from the tourists.









Sam Hill visited England, and was quite impressed with Stonehenge., which, he was told, was a place of sacrifice. At the end of WWI, he wanted to build a monument to the young men who had been sacrified to national pride (remember, he was a Quaker) And so, he built a full sized replica of Stonehenge.







I sure wish I had a model with me. Once you have taken pictures of the uprights and crosspieces and lights and shadows which are totally unsubtle on this bare graveled flatness, I found myself at a loss. I longed for children in bright clothing to play hide and seek, or for a young lady in a red dress to lend a sense of perspective. or for sweethearts holding hands or something . . .I just didn't get much photographic good out of the site.




See, one person says so much - but MJ is too self-conscious, and our time was short.





Back over the river and west with the wood all too soon we had to go.

Tomorrow, what I knitted during those five hours in the car.