Day 59: Gig Harbor & Marymount Campus

September 24, 2017

All Afternoon at the First LeMay Museum

LeMay Hall, the first room in the LeMay Collection museum at Marymount

We got a late start today, and so decided that instead of trying to hit two museums we would concentrate on just one. So, we headed over to the LeMay Collection at Marymount, instead of the Lemay museum in downtown Tacoma (but don't worry, we'll get there later in the week).

This museum is about 20 minutes from downtown and is the one actually run and maintained by the LeMay family. That other museum just bears their name because they donated 600 cars to it. The larger remainder of the collection is at this museum as well as in the family's private garages.

And, quite the collection it was! The main museum consisted of 5 rooms each of which contained a collection of cars (and other stuff-- some quite random--dolls, boat motors, radios, brass firehouse nozzles, signs, jukeboxes, etc.) and the actual tour took us around the grounds where numerous large vehicles were scattered in various state of repair and disrepair (firetrucks, ice cream trucks, tractors, trains, cranes, bulldozers, combines, you name it). Apparently Mr. LeMay simply loved stuff, and had the money to collect it, and so he did. (Bob was in awe!)

For example, here is the brass fire hose nozzle collection. Apparently it is not the only one in existence, as according to this article there is a small set of strange people who have a fascination with this type of object.

Brass Fire Hose Nozzle Collection (Yes, collecting these is really a thing)

We began working our way through the main building on a self-guided tour. Here is Bob interacting with one of the exhibits.

A Mummy, a Dummy, and Bob
(Note that the iPhone focused on the Mummy & the Dummy but not Bob)

At 1PM sharp we were herded over to the tour guide to see the rest. And, what a tour! This guy just loved talking about cars and did, for hours and hours. Yes our tour began at 1 and ended just before 4.

To give you a feel, Bob shot this video of just ONE of the massive buildings housing cars. Actually, this first one was a tent (which Bob notes was even larger than Ron's tent at Basin Electric's Dry Fork Plant).

Here is Bob taking that video:

A Still of Bob Taking a Video

This still captures the tent and the 4 rows of cars on the ground, in addition to the three levels on the side:

The White Tent of Cars at the LeMay Collection at Marymount

Here are a few shots of the second building we toured. In this one our guide gave us a story or some history about almost every car there (which is why the tour took almost 3 hours-- but it was fun).

The Green Building of Cars at the LeMay Collection at Marymount

Another view of the Green Building-- a vast space of wall to wall cars from 1896-2013

There were a number of individual cars we liked (and photographed), and a number of those did not make the cut. But here is a very curated selection of some of our favorites. Read the captions for why we selected them for the blog.