Sunday, August 14, 2011

ROSARIO RESORT

Once we landed on Orcas Island, we headed uphill toward Rosario Resort, our first stop of choice. Fields of hay, quiet farms, sheep, home gardens,old barns, small ponds or lakes and a few cows populate the view from roadsides. Peaceful.  The day turned sunny and I shed my jacket and enjoyed the first real sunny day since leaving Murphys.

This is my first day using my new camera, a Sony Cyber-shot DSC-HX5V, and I liked the shadows on the walkway.  Jim got into shorts and a T-shirt.

We wanted to have lunch at the beautiful Rosario Resort Hotel only to learn that the Hotel only serves dinner. We were invited to look around the building because it was once the home of its founder, Robert Moran, and is now a museum. Robert Moran arrived in Seattle penniless and managed to amass a fortune through his hard work. He was told in 1904 that he had one year to live. He moved to Orcas Island and built this magnificent mansion with his shipbuilding wealth. (He lived another 38 years on Orcas.) A link to Wikipedia about Moran: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Moran_%28shipbuilder%29

During this period, fireplaces were in vogue and one graced every bedroom in this house. The main fireplace was built from marble chips embedded in concrete and formed whole, then delivered to Orcas for this room.  Moran was maybe the first recycler. He used marble chips gathered  from the building  of  Seattle’s King St. station for this mantle. Jim used my new camera to take this photo. My old camera would never have  accomplished  this wide-angle. The mantle is cool and smooth to touch.

Here a close-up of that marble mantel. I loved this room, and other beauties.

This stained glass light fixture.

A unique stained glass window.

The rich woods, the view from the dining room window, (now hotel dining room window.)

There is a room sized organ, beautiful grandfather clocks, modern bathrooms and closets and other innovations for the time, but I became fascinated by the door hinges.

Cupboards also had ‘hell for strong’ hinges. Quality and craftsmanship showed through out the house.

Flower basket light posts line every walkway, which we took to the only other building in town. The Castaway, Marina  Store, grill, public restrooms and patio over-looking the beautiful pleasure craft harbor.

My new camera allows a 180 degree scan of an area and pastes it together as one picture. I’m not sure how well I will like this feature, yet. Left click on it to get the full affect. The food at the grill was of good quality. I had a fish burrito and a local craft beer.  Jim had fish and chips. We can recommend both. On to Olga.

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