Off to Seattle

In Port Townsend we are restricted to about three good coffee shops within a kilometer of the harbour.  We wanted to get a little more choice so we headed to Seattle the home of Starbucks, with the highest high end coffee shop saturation on the planet.

Two buses, one ferry, two and a half hours and two dollars and we arrived in downtown Seattle. The weather was dry but cold, a wet cold not the namby-pamby dry cold in the Yukon which everyone knows is not cold at all.

We had no clear plan, so we walked up to the space needle which was having a space lift. We chose not to pay the twenty dollars to see the view. Nearby was the Chihuly Garden of Glass. If I was by myself I would have given this a by and gone to a Ship Chandlers. Much to my surprise the Garden was spectacular. This guy Chihuly employs at least fifty people at the Garden.  Wikipedia says that he had sold 29 million dollars worth of glass art as of 2009. Anyways here are a few pics taken with my smart phone. None of them do it justice. But you can get a bit of an idea what it is like.

Side Trips

There are a ton of things to do around Fort Townsend. The bus is cheap, as is the ferry.

There has a been a progression of low pressure systems blasting through accompanied by high wind and rain.  Inevitably there are nice weather days.  We try and go on an outing when the weather is good.  This whole blog is skewed to pictures showing nice weather.  When it is nice I take a lots of pictures. When it is raining and blowing the camera remains inside.
These pictures are taken on an extreme windy but sunny day at Point Wilson which is a quick bus ride away from the harbour.

Yesterday we took the ferry across Puget Sound, to Whitby Island and the Fort Casey state park.  In October they raised the ferry rates. Now we had to fork out $1.75 to cross the Sound.  $3.50 return.

The park is on a promontory overlooking Juan de Fuca Strait and Puget Sound. In the early 1900s there was an artillery installation here and at Fort Worden behind Port Townsend and another location further north. Any unwanted intruders would be in the cross hairs of these three forts. Now it is a great place to go for a walk and look out over the ocean.

Here are some kite aerial photos. Visible by eye but not in these pictures are the San Juan Islands, located to the north across Juan de Fuca Strait.

Today is one of those wet days and we are hunkered down in the library catching up to the blog and accumulating our next cache of books and dvds.

North Beach to Fort Warden

Once again we hopped on the bus to West Beach where there is a nice park with a pond right beside the ocean. We walked from there through the Fort Warden park and then to downtown and back to the marina. Weather was spectacular. A good day to cross Juan de Fuca Strait.

Larry Scott Trail

Yesterday we took the bus eight miles out of town to Four Corners.( 1$ senior day pass ) From there we walked back on an old rail siding that has been turned into a wonderful trail. It passed through forest rural farmland, along a busy highway , through an industrial area and finished along the seafront right back at our marina.
It was a wonderful walk and the weather remained pretty good most of the day. Despite the nice weather we had the trail mostly to ourselves.

They have plans to extend this trail all the way out to Neah Bay near the open ocean.