Chihuly Garden & Glass // Space Needle Field Trip
On December 16th, SPSC put on a field trip with 15 Seniors and three Staff members to visit the Seattle Center. We all went to the Chihuly Garden & Glass Museum, and then most of us went up to the top of the Space Needle! We were very appreciative of all of the precautions that the Seattle Center was taking for all of its guests. Once we got into the Chihuly Museum, we had a Covid screening, and showed our vaccine cards to get a wristband that worked for both the museum and the Space Needle. Given that news of the Omicron variant had just come out, and having a number of Seniors that are in a higher risk population, we felt confident that this would be a safe trip, and we really appreciate everything that everyone at the Chihuly Museum and Space Needle were doing to keep everyone safe and healthy!
This was certainly our most popular trip we did in 2021, we had a large group of Veterans and their spouses, and then a few Seniors from our Vietnamese and Cambodian cohorts. A few of the Seniors had their own method of getting to the Seattle Center, so we met four of them there, the other 14 of us piled into our SPSC passenger van and headed off to the Seattle Center at 10am. After meeting our other Seniors at the Chihuly, we spent about three hours exploring the museum, taking lots of photos, seeing a glass-blowing demonstration, and watching a movie about Dale Chihuly. We were very fortunate that the museum let us eat our lunches in the Glass House as it was raining outside on and off throughout the day. That was certainly a highlight for all of us, the Glass House is one of the most beautiful places in the entire museum, and getting to sit in there and relax while enjoying a great lunch from Ingallina’s Boxed Lunches was wonderful.
After we left the Chihuly Garden & Glass Museum, we walked over to the Space Needle and 16 of the 18 of us went up to the top. We got treated like VIPs and got to take our own elevator up to the top since we had some Seniors that were not able to walk up hills. Once we got to the top, the views were incredible! We took laps around the top deck and took photos all over. All of us made our way down to the glass floor after a while and that was really cool. Many of us were surprised that the entire floor wasn’t glass, and that the rotation wasn’t a little faster, however that was really nice and it didn’t feel much different at all.
Before we left for SPSC, we got a few more group photos and then loaded up the van. The Seniors told us how much fun they had, and many of them got to experience the Chihuly Museum and/or the Space Needle for the first time!
As always, wonderful memories were made, and we are looking forward to more trips like this in 2022!