Travelogue: Tacoma and Port Townsend

 

Aboard Zodiac, Puget Sound, WA

The Pacific Northwest is always such a fun, interesting place to visit.  For this year's trek to the Wooden Boat Festival in Port Townsend, we decided to tack on an extra night in Tacoma at the front end so that we could visit the Glass Museum and just enjoy revisiting parts of the town we hadn't been to in a while. Our older daughter went to University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, and we always liked visiting her there.

Since reading The Glassmaker by Tracy Chevalier earlier this summer, I particularly wanted to see a glass blowing demonstration, and I wasn't disappointed. We watched the crew make a cat pitcher out of glass like the ones shown below--they weren't available in the gift shop yet, or I would've bought one!

After enjoying Tacoma, we headed north, stopping in Port Ludlow for lunch, where we saw this very cool totem pole. 

Then on to Port Townsend for the Wooden Boat Festival. This was our 4th time attending the festival, and it never disappoints. We stayed about a mile from the marina where the festival is held, right on the water where we watched herons and gulls as well as a herd of deer each morning. We got well over 10k steps a day--walking to/from the festival, as well as roaming the docks, walking to various venues, etc.

The highpoints of the trip:

1) Chatting with a boat builder who built virtually the same boat that my husband, Jeff is currently building. He was a wealth of valuable information. 

2) Going for a sail on this 160-foot, 101-year old beauty. The Zodiac is based in Bellingham, WA and has an all-volunteer crew who were amazing. They also do multi-day cruises over the summer, so maybe next year we may opt for something more than a 2-hour cruise.

Zodiac 

3) Attending two absolutely terrific bird talks - one on puffins, by John Piatt, marine biologist and director of the World Puffin Congress, and one on the world of seabirds, by Peter Harrison, renowned seabird expert and author of the definitive guidebook on seabirds.

4) Discovering a couple of great new restaurants--if you are ever in Port Townsend, try Finistere for an upscale meal (we had a sampling of small plates and sides to share), and Tommyknockers for delicious Cornish pasties.

As always in the Pacific Northwest, we had a great time with mild weather (only one rainy afternoon) and found interesting, friendly dogs and people, including Bug and owner!