Wednesday, August 17: Touring Port Townsend

The couple in the Montana next door told us they had gone to Port Townsend the day before and had enjoyed the town there with its seaside shops and restaurants, so we decided to take the truck and go there as it was less than ½ hour away. The main street, with its shops and restaurants, is on the waterfront and there are a couple of small parks where you can walk out onto beach areas. As you look up on the bluffs, you can see interesting old Victorian style buildings. The day was sunny and cool as Jan and I walked out onto a small beach and collected some rocks and shells for Owen.

I have found that I’m becoming a “treatoholic” as we now pass by ice cream and fudge stores quite often. Consequently, we stopped in for a treat of ice cream cone. I had Swiss Orange Chocolate Chip, an old favorite from Swensen’s. We walked down to the marina and watched the boats, wondering about the lives of the people sailing them, how they made enough money to be able to afford their boats, and how much the boats must have cost. I used to love sailing in Cohasset Bay with our little Trist 14 and wondered if I will ever sail again. I whimsically mentioned to Jan that I’d like to sign up for a crew sailing to Tahiti.

Dave at Port Townsend

Jan at the Port Townsend Harbor

To our surprise, here was an RV park right there on the water. We were jealous of these guys as they were looking out over the water while we were looking out on highway 101! We decided that in the future to pick our RV parks more carefully. We have stayed away from state parks because they usually can’t handle big rigs, but as we have seen, that might not be the case. The down side of state parks is that they either take reservations 2 weeks before hand or on a first-come, first-serve basis.

We drove a few miles out to another state park where there was a beach and a light house. The light house area was fenced in and closed, but there was a lot of beach area. We noticed that only the kids would go in the water, so I’m sure the water was quite cold. There was also another RV park there with ocean views. This was too much as I thought about the 101 traffic. Since the views of the water and islands were so spectacular, I got out my small telescope to have a look around. We saw a huge volcano-like mountain across the way with tons of snow on it and wondered what it was. Jan thought it might be Mount Rainer. I said that Mount Rainer didn’t have a double dip peak, so having the 3G Ipad, Jan Googled it, got a picture, and sure enough it was Mount Baker in the northernmost part of Washington State.

Mount Baker in the distance

Looking out over the bay

Dave looking through his telescope at the boats

On our way to Port Townsend, we passed an Indian Casino, so I suggested to Jan that we stop off to see if they had a buffet, which is my main attraction to casinos, not the gambling. Sure enough they had one, so we had steak and seafood stuffed chicken.

That evening, we drove to Port Angeles to check out the ferry parking, so there were no surprises the next morning. On the way, we stopped at the Walmart Super Center there to get some Dramamine for Jan and more food items.