Category Archives: Washington State Parks

Interpretive Art, New Painting Post, Washington State Parks, Waysides, Wildlife

Hoypus Landing Wayside Panels

Recently finished some new art for wayside panels at Deception Pass State Park here in Washington State. I’ve lost count of the number of installations I have at this park, a dozen maybe, with a couple even having been washed out to sea in a storm last year.

These three are for a salmon habitat restoration project, which I’ve sure been painting a lot of recently. Washington is betting big on salmon restoration, spending billions (yes) removing road culverts, rock walls on the beaches, fixing it so young salmon and forage fish can have places to live. I seem to be THE guy for interpreting this, and have made dozens in the past few years. Here are three.

So, this place was once a ferry landing. It didn’t last long before the state built the nearby bridge, but in the process, the ferry landing really messed up the beach, making it difficult for fish to feel at home. So, fast forward a century, and Northwest Straits Foundation managed the removal of the mess, putting it back to as natural as possible. It was my job to show this.

This panel went to a similar messed-up beach just to the north of Hoypus Point, same reasons, same fish, but along a neighborhood of houses.

Here’s the result at Hoypus, the ferry landing road is now a trail, the beach put back to gravel and forest duff. The only man-made installation here now is going to be my panels.

Thanks to Lisa Kaufman from Northwest Straits Foundation (on the right of Nancy), and Joy Sullivan at the state park, for allowing me to paint yet more forage fish and my other favorite critters.

Thanks for reading this week.

Larry Eifert

Here’s my Facebook fan page. I post lots of other stuff there.

Click here to go to our main website – with jigsaw puzzles, prints, interpretive portfolios and lots of other stuff.

Nancy’s web portfolio of stunning photography and paintings

And here to go to Virginia Eifert’s website.

Murals, New Painting Post, Washington State Parks, Wildlife

More New Mount St. Helens Paintings

These are some of the other new paintings for the Mount St Helens Visitor Center at Silver Lake, Washington. Commissioned by Washington State Parks, they are part of the interior exhibit plan and it’s complicated enough that I’ll just let the art speak for itself. There’s more than this, and the last post I published, but you’ll get the idea.

I wanted to explain the newspaper at the top. When I started painting these a few months ago, I opened one of my file cabinets to find maybe a map of the park, and this thing jumped out at me. It’s been sitting here now for 43 years, as I bought it for $2 right after the eruption – and I imagined it saying “me, me, I’m finally here to help”. And it did, as several of these paintings are direct results of the photos in this yellowing magazine. Serendipity, I think the word is.

This painting deserves a bit of explanation. Left side, immediately after the blast, right side might be today, 43 years after the blast. The elk returned immediately, and in their footsteps in the ash, water gathered and supported many critters as they expanded back into the ash zone.

And below is the mountain today (or, two summers ago when we hiked there). It’s recovering nicely and it’s always fun to see how nature finds a way to cover every inch of ground, even after it’s been blown to smithereens.

Thanks for reading this week.

Larry Eifert

Here’s my Facebook fan page. I post lots of other stuff there.

Click here to go to our main website – with jigsaw puzzles, prints, interpretive portfolios and lots of other stuff.

Nancy’s web portfolio of stunning photography and paintings

And here to go to Virginia Eifert’s website.

Commissioned paintings, Jigsaw Puzzles, Murals, Nancy Cherry Eifert, New Painting Post, Washington State Parks, Wildlife

The Mount St Helens project

I’ve been working on this project since May, but the painting didn’t really start until August. I’ll bet over a million brush strokes! I’m close to finishing painting 24 images for the big revamping of the Washington State Park’s visitor center at Mt St Helens National Monument. I’m told it’s one of the biggest interpretive projects ever for Washington State Parks.

I’ve already made some art for this fantastic park before, but that was a series of outside wayside panels for the US Forest Service placed around the mountain, plus a big painting that we eventually made into a puzzle. This current effort is at Silver Lake on the park’s west side, a big visitor center built right after the eruption in 1980. I’m working with EDX in Seattle who did the designs and asked me to do the art. Sure glad they did – it’s been interesting.

For this post, I’ll focus on just the wetlands tabletop, 17 feet long and 4 feet wide, it’s one of the most complex visitor center exhibits I’ve painted. Other parts of the project will be posted soon.

I have few finished photos of this, but I did get the tabletop main painting scanned – a whopping 4.5 gigabits of data that will be printed on aluminum (I think).

Drawing and the beginnings of the painted art.
Final painting for the tabletop, about 17′ wide.
Part of the left side of the tabletop.

The tabletop has all sorts of lift lids showing hidden critters beneath them. There are spinners that show the eruption, another with the evolution of Silver Lake. It’s a very busy thing and I’m hoping kids will love it.

On my next post, I’ll get into the smaller pieces of art, then the second wall (an entirely different theme and painting 14′ long).

Nancy on the boardwalk at Silver Lake. Enough wood here to build several houses, and it’s in good shape – goes on for half a mile. The volcano is straight ahead but still 25m away.

In case you don’t remember what the mountain looks like, here’s a puzzle we did some years ago for it.

Thanks for reading this week.

Larry Eifert

Here’s my Facebook fan page. I post lots of other stuff there.

Click here to go to our main website – with jigsaw puzzles, prints, interpretive portfolios and lots of other stuff.

Nancy’s web portfolio of stunning photography and paintings

And here to go to Virginia Eifert’s website.

Commissioned paintings, New Painting Post, Washington State Parks

Using Art for Historic Fort Flagler

On top of everything else, I somehow fit these two paintings into 2022, a  year of many paintings. This park, Fort Flagler State Park, is on Washington’s Marrowstone Island, only 4 air-miles from our place near Port Townsend. It’s so close, how could I say no to learn more about my ‘hood’?

It’s a place that has relics from WW1, WW2, and many other improvements that have come along during the years – including after it became a state park. Sorting all that out was monumental, but thanks to Kelsey at State Parks, we figured out what to paint and what to leave out.  The above painting is about the fort and Admiralty Inlet, the waterway the fort is guarding.

The panel below is the same fort, but the housing area during WW2, an amazing ‘town’ of high-end barracks and homes, the power plant, stores and social buildings, parade grounds, the hospital and all the rest that was required when this was basically wilderness. No driving over to  the Food Co-op for kale, but the fort had huge gardens and probably acres of greens. I left out the Chinese laundry that was on the beach – imagine, all the wash was done using hot salt water!

Besides maps, I used my own site photos to figure all this out. I pieced it together, one building at a time, one street after the other. It wasn’t easy, but that’s why this stuff is still fun for me. I DID grow up in a museum. It’s in my blood.

Oh, and thanks to Sam W at state parks who keeps giving me these fun projects, who was also a great help dodging the gun-guys and their overly picky changes.

Above are my sketches with changes the historians came up with.  It’s just part of the process: I toss it out there as best I can, they all mutter and say “nice try, but”. As you can see, these finished panels are now installed and have become another part of the history of this place. It’s not just some of the best beaches and forest trails, but a really historic landscape.

Thanks for reading this week. You can sign up for emails for these posts on my website at larryeifert.com.

Larry Eifert

Here’s my Facebook fan page. I post lots of other stuff there.

And Instagram is here.

Click here to go to our main website – with jigsaw puzzles, prints, interpretive portfolios and lots of other stuff.

Nancy’s web portfolio of stunning photography and paintings.

And here to go to Virginia Eifert’s website.

Commissioned paintings, New Painting Post, Washington State Parks, Waysides, Wildlife

Sand Verbena Moth

I went on vacation – from making art.  It’s been years since I did that, maybe never. I’ve been a working artist for over half a century and I can’t remember ever just, well, stopping – I worried I’d forget how to do it.

I’m now back in the saddle and painting from a long list of patient people waiting – and this wayside panel is soon going to my local park, Fort Worden State Park in Port Townsend, Washington. Here’s the original concept sketch.

This park is a beautiful place, but all is not paradise here – alien plants are everywhere. European dune grass and Scotch broom have infiltrated all over the dunes, choking out natives like the yellow sand verbena that needs shifting dunes to live.  This plant actually has it’s own pollinator. The sand verbena moth was just  discovered in 1995, and it turns out this new-to-us fuzzy creature needs this plant to live, and only this plant. There are only 6 locations in Washington State where it still survives. The moth uses the verbena for everything, from eating flower nectar, to laying its eggs in the same flowers, to the larvae eating the flowers and leaves. The plant, in turn, uses the moth to pollinate it – a symbiotic love affair.

Here’s the sand verbena moth.

The area where the dune restoration is progressing will soon have this wayside sign installed to tell this story, and help keep people off these dunes – and off the verbena and moths. It doesn’t look like an endangered habitat, but it is.

This is, in a nutshell, what I do – I make art to educate and help people to understand their roles in helping nature. I’ve always thought it’s a good reason to make paintings.

And here are my little inset paintings for the lower left area. Fun little studies by themselves.

Thanks for reading this week. You can sign up for emails for these posts on my website at larryeifert.com.

Larry Eifert

Here’s my Facebook fan page. I post lots of other stuff there.

And Instagram is here.

Click here to go to our main website – with jigsaw puzzles, prints, interpretive portfolios and lots of other stuff.

Nancy’s web portfolio of stunning photography and paintings.

And here to go to Virginia Eifert’s website.

Hiking, New Painting Post, New Published Story, Published painting, Washington State Parks

Feather Boa – 48 North magazine


With this August 2021 edition, I’ve now done about 110 of these pages, and while I’ve been considering possibly NOT doing any more, I mean, how long can this go on? But I’ve just learned so very much about the Salish Sea by making these pieces of art, researching the details, that I really can’t stop. I see now that you can never learn too much about this stuff, especially in the middle of my seventh decade.  It’s all the fine details about how these things live, how amazing it all is. And besides, it’s really fun to spot something interesting and rush home to write about it – paint it.

Here’s the original drawing, which I did some of while walking Port Townsend’s North Beach at low tide. A VERY low tide, possibly the lowest of the year. All this feather boa kelp was strewn about on the sand, making great abstract forms and shapes.

So, I wrote this in the 2021 August issue of 48 North.

Saw this feather boa on a low-tide beach walk. There was a sandy beach, solid boulders, a place where currents flow –  and all that equals kelp. There are at least 140 types of brown seaweeds here in the Northwest and they all work in similar ways. The permanent base attaches itself to solid underwater rocks. These are usually on underwater reefs and onshore rocks down to about 50 feet deep. If you see kelp floating up ahead of you, there can only be one reason it’s there – ROCKS!

By summer, this plant joins the other kelps in creating real forests of lush green and brown plants waving in the current. While bull kelp stipes (the trunk) and blades (the leaves) can grow 100 feet a season, the feather boa gets to be about 30 feet long, and in my mind it’s the most beautiful of them all. Based on a single velvet-looking stipe about an inch wide, several different types of blades branch off in wild profusion. There are gas-filled bladders that hold the plant up towards the light like little life jackets, single leaves that look like tiny willow leaves, and skinnier lateral branches that look like twigs with smaller blades at each end. The entire thing is shimmery golden brown.

These plants are key habitat to almost countless other creatures and food for many crabs and snails, sea slugs and fish. When you spot feather boas on the beach at low tide, carefully turn over the blades and see what surprises await you. It’s possibly the best reason to come here.

To end, there are lots of parts in this thing. There’s the ‘main stem’ that looks like velcro. Then along the edges are bladders filled with gas so it floats up into the current. The leaves in between provide the photosynthesis to make it live that are all sorts of shapes and sizes, very random. All this on something possibly 20 feet long, and it all grows from a root clinging to an exposed rock, each and every summer!

Larry Eifert paints and sails the Pacific Northwest from Port Townsend. His large-scale murals can be seen in many national parks across America, and at larryeifert.com.

Thanks for reading this week. You can sign up for emails for these posts on my website at larryeifert.com.

Larry Eifert

Here’s my Facebook fan page. I post lots of other stuff there.

And Instagram is here.

Click here to go to our main website – with jigsaw puzzles, prints, interpretive portfolios and lots of other stuff.

Nancy’s web portfolio of stunning photography and paintings.

And here to go to Virginia Eifert’s website.

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People Paintings, Washington State Parks, Waysides, Wildlife

An Art Gallery Along the Trail

I may paint giant walls and entire park visitor center installations, but some of my favorite projects involve small and intimate encounters along a trail somewhere. Olmstead Place State Historic Park is near Ellensburg Washington just east of the Cascades and is an intact historic farm that clearly shows how tough if was to live here a century ago. Little trails, historic farm buildings, a historic garden and much more. It’s a small place, but in the past couple of years I’ve contributed quite a bit of art to telling its story. Laura Busby at the park recently sent me some installation photos, so I’m sharing them here.

Imagine, you’re walking along a pleasant riparian trail and you come across these:

It’s what I’m all about, I think. Helping people to stumble across an art installation in the woods and also learn a bit about this place, too. Perfect!

Here are most of the paintings as I last saw them, ready to be fabricated and installed.

This second set of panels are placed on the walking trail around the homestead. They’re slightly smaller and painted with watercolor and pencil.

Thanks for reading this week. You can sign up for emails for these posts on my website at larryeifert.com.

Larry Eifert

Here’s my Facebook fan page. I post lots of other stuff there.

And Instagram is here.

Click here to go to our main website – with jigsaw puzzles, prints, interpretive portfolios and lots of other stuff.

Nancy’s web portfolio of stunning photography and paintings.

And here to go to Virginia Eifert’s website.

New Painting Post, Sailing, Washington State Parks, Waysides, Wildlife

Sucia Island Marine Food Webs

There are 16 paintings here, all in layers!

This is my second effort for two wayside panels at Sucia Island in the San Juan Islands. See the other one here. This one is much more complex, many pieces of art all layered together to tell the story of forage fish, salmon and orca whales.

Here is the initial concept.

And here is the seventh version.

And below are the individual little paintings used to make this final composite.

Many Friends groups often use my final art for other uses. We put the art on posters, jigsaw puzzles, framed art they can use for fund-raising. Sorry to say, but obviously that can’t be the case with this one – but I thought the orca and salmon paintings were worthy of being stand-alone art.

I know lots of Northwest boaters read this blog since I also write a monthly page for 48 North, the Puget Sound boating magazine. Next time you’re anchored off Sucia Island, search out these two installations. They’ll be living their lives sitting beside Mud Bay. I will, too.

Thanks for reading this week. You can sign up for emails for these posts on my website at larryeifert.com.

Larry Eifert

Here’s my Facebook fan page. I post lots of other stuff there.

And Instagram is here.

Click here to go to our main website – with jigsaw puzzles, prints, interpretive portfolios and lots of other stuff.

Nancy’s web portfolio of stunning photography and paintings.

And here to go to Virginia Eifert’s website.

New Painting Post, Sailing, Washington State Parks, Waysides, Wildlife

Sucia Island State Park wayside art

I’ve been busy with no time to post here – but now I’m back with some new stuff. I was commissioned to produce two outdoor free-standing installations on one of the most remote and remarkable islands in the Salish Sea, Sucia Island Marine State Park. This place holds great meaning and many memories for me – I’ve been here countless times. It’s along the US – Canadian boundary north of the San Juan Islands and it takes some time just to get there. There isn’t ferry service, only private boats come here – and maybe a giant barge for this project.

A small muddy bay once had a sand spit beach dividing off a productive and pristine salt marsh with the bay. Years ago, a road was built on the beach top and shoreline armoring with a culvert. This stopped salmon completely from entering the marsh at high tides, a good source of insect food.

With the direction of the Friends of the San Juans and many funders, they brought out heavy equipment on a barge and removed the culvert, cement armoring and put things right again. And, at the end, I got to paint it, twice. I’ll post the second panel soon.

Here’s the original first draft sketch – pretty close to what the end result was, don’t you think?  And below is the final sketch version with text in place and a few things added.

Below is the final art, ready to be put in the design. If this image looks serene, that’s the exact word I’d use for this ethereal place – maybe one of the very best in the Pacific Northwest.

So, doing this made  me remember the history I have here. Many paintings of mine were painted here. THREE boats of mine have been purchased, restored, countless hours spent making them run and be safe – and decades of time has been used to get me (as a painter of nature) to places like this. When Shannon and Tina requested a couple of boats in this painting to show human interaction here, I realized I could put my own experiences in the painting.

So, classic wooden boat memories, all of them, here is “October” in the 1980’s. Then “Rumpuckarori” in the 1990’s. And finally “Sea Witch” in the 2000’s.

This image of Sea Witch, below, was actually taken at anchor right here in Snoring Bay, straight out front in the painting. These three boats undoubtedly helped make me the painter and person I am today. “October” got me to Alaska the first time, and another not shown got me to Mexico. Nancy and I lived aboard “Rumpy” during some of the best times for both of us, and there Nancy is in the cockpit of “Sea Witch”, below.

Thanks to Tina and Shannon from the help in making these paintings interesting and fun memories for me.

If you’re reading this on social media, I, Larry Eifert, paints and sails the Pacific Northwest from Port Townsend. My large-scale murals can be seen in many national parks across America, and at larryeifert.com.

Thanks for reading this week. You can sign up for emails for these posts on my website at larryeifert.com.

Larry Eifert

Here’s my Facebook fan page. I post lots of other stuff there.

And Instagram is here.

Click here to go to our main website – with jigsaw puzzles, prints, interpretive portfolios and lots of other stuff.

Nancy’s web portfolio of stunning photography and paintings.

And here to go to Virginia Eifert’s website.

Commissioned paintings, New Painting Post, New Published Story, Washington State Parks

Jr Rangers Art at Deception Pass

The Junior Ranger program is nationwide and in most National Parks. I’ve contributed to a few in the past, providing art for the activity books. If you don’t know, it works like this: your kiddo asks at the visitor center for the book, they fill out the fun pages of puzzles and questions, many requiring getting out in the park – then get the Junior Ranger badge when you turn it back in before you leave. It’s a big deal, with millions of kids involved. Now, a few of the bigger state parks are getting into the action, and I just finished some art for Deception Pass State Park here in Puget Sound. Here’s a link to the national program. https://www.nps.gov/kids/parks-with-junior-ranger-programs.htm

Deception Pass has many habitats, beach, dunes, old-growth forest, cliffs and freshwater lakes.
This page is about soil and the bacteria and fungi that live in it.
Cliffs near the bay have distinctive plants, like this gumweed.
Oystercatcher, orchre stars, clams and crabs are around the rocky tidepools.
Sandy dunes are shown here, with the San Juan Islands offshore.

This is the sixth project I’ve done for this park, a small place packed with beauty. It’s suffering from too many people and too much noise from Navy jets training right over the park, but I still like to make art about these places. It helps me connect to them. Good nature doesn’t always have to be wilderness.

You can also see this post and all the rest coming up by simply adding your email to our list here – right side, down a bit.

Thanks for reading this week.

Larry Eifert

Here’s my Facebook fan page. I post lots of other stuff there.

And Instagram is here.

Click here to go to our main website – with jigsaw puzzles, prints, interpretive portfolios and lots of other stuff.

Nancy’s web portfolio of stunning photography and paintings

And here to go to Virginia Eifert’s website.