Port Angeles – Page 5 – Sequim Daily Photo

Juan de Fuca Festival of the Arts

We’re spending the weekend immersed in live music and performance at the Juan de Fuca Festival of the Arts in Port Angeles. It’s a four day lineup of talent from near and far, and an opportunity to be saturated with awesomeness.

Chris Swenson was a highlight of our first day. He calls his work “human jazz,” a description that barely scratches the surface of voice/song, movement/dance, and performance that defies easy characterization. Check out his website to get a better idea and see him in action.

The program reads, in part, “His work is unique in its cross-cultural synthesis of theater, dance and music and its willingness to unbridle the imagination.”

The festival is a family event with a street fair and free outside entertainment. As the day progressed, kids joined the fun and danced joyfully around the periphery of the main stage.

Open at last

Old Olympic Highway closed last July for rebuilding of the narrow old bridge over McDonald Creek. After some weather delays the new span is open. The work was completed on budget and it looks nice. It’s wider and the road has lost its former deep dip. It sure is great to have this convenient route back.

The view next door

Port Angeles, Sequim’s neighbor to the west, nestles like Sequim at the base of the Olympics. Its location offers a different perspective of the mountains. At this point in summer there’s not a lot of snow left on the peaks.

Olympic Medical Center

Olympic Medical Center recently completed construction of this new clinic in Port Angeles, about 15 miles west of Sequim. Like many rural areas there never seem to be enough doctors. Recruiting and retaining specialists is a particular challenge and many of us travel to Seattle, an all day affair, for care that isn’t available locally. The new clinic, above, helps centralize and expand services.

Creation story

This plaque is set into the pavement at Waterfront Park in Port Angeles. Entitled “Klallam Creation Story,” it is about one of our local Native American tribe and reads as follows:

“The Klallam tell us how the tribes of the region were created at a place on the Elwha River where there are two big holes in the rock called “coiled baskets.” It is there that the creator bathed and blessed the people.”

Art on the town

This is another piece of kinesthetic street art in Port Angeles, part of the city’s “Art on the Town” organized by the Port Angeles Downtown Merchants Association. This one is called “Bernard 2” by Craig Walker of White Salmon, WA, a town in southern Washington on the Columbia River. The top part of this piece rotates in the wind.