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!

Travelogue: Wooden Boats, Port Townsend, Olympic NP, Mt Rainier

 

100s of beautiful wooden boats on display in Port Townsend

Got back last Saturday from a wonderful trip to Washington state, where we lunched in Gig Harbor, spent two wonderful days at the Wooden Boat Festival in Port Townsend, visited Cape Flattery (the most northwestern point in the lower US 48), hiked in Olympic National Park (Lake Quinault), enjoyed the waterfalls of Mt Rainier National Park, and revisited Tacoma.

This was our second time attending the Wooden Boat Festival, and I hope not our last. My husband has been gearing up to build a wooden sailboat for a few years and hopefully he'll be able to get underway this fall. We also spent a morning on the beautiful Adventuress, sailing around the harbor. The Adventuress is a 133-foot schooner, originally launched in 1913.

Sister ship of the Adventuress, which was sailing at the same time we were.

Port Townsend is a lovely town, filled with historic buildings--we stayed at the Palace Hotel, which is just blocks from the festival--on the third floor, no elevator, but full of Victorian charm.

Obligatory selfie at Cape Flattery.

The rugged coast of Cape Flattery, where the wind never ceases.

There are several temperate rainforests in Olympic National Park. We visited a couple near beautiful Lake Quinault, which were surreal. Seemed like we were walking through Middle Earth--mossy, misshapen, ghostly, wonderful. Made me want to reread The Overstory.

On to Mt Rainier NP, which we had not visited before. It was cool and misty and socked in for almost the whole visit, and we never actually saw the mountain in all its glory. We did enjoy hiking--very cool vegetation that is so different from what I'm used to in CO--and there were lots of waterfalls. We ate both nights at a Ukranian restaurant next to our hotel in Ashford, which is just outside the park, and I discovered the joy that is a chicken piroshki.

Tractor carved out of wood, near the Ukrainian restaurant.

Last night in Tacoma. Tacoma gets a bad rap as a poor cousin to Seattle, but one of our daughters went to University of Puget Sound and we really fell in love with the town visiting her over the four years she was there. We did get a view of Mt Rainier at dinner in Tacoma at a waterfront restaurant. Figures!

Tacoma waterfront along Ruston Way--what's not to love!!!

One of my favorite things to do on vacation is to go to the local bookshops and buy something. So here's what I got on this trip:

Gig Harbor - The Woman in Cabin 10, by Ruth Ware (which I devoured during the trip)

Port Townsend - Brave the Wild River: The Untold Story of Two Women Who Mapped the Botany of the Grand Canyon, by Melissa L. Sevigny (hoping to start shortly)

Travelogue: Tacoma and points south

Last Thursday I flew up to Seattle to meet my daughter and husband, who had driven up from Colorado earlier in the week. She moved into her freshman dorm on Friday, we did the parents part of orientation, took her out to dinner on Saturday, and then drove back to Colorado on Sunday and Monday.

Before I left on Thursday, I had been feeling pretty poorly--stressed, depressed, and generally battling the blues. When we left Tacoma on Sunday morning, I was riding an emotional high--she was happy, the school was great, and our second encounter with the Puget Sound area convinced us that it really is a wonderful part of the world.

On our first visit we stayed in the downtown area and I fell in love with the cool, gorgeous swirly glass art of Dale Chihuly which adorns the area, both in museums and in public places and spaces.



This time we stayed further north and spent a lot of time walking in the parks along Commencement Bay--the weather was absolutely perfect (mild, slight breeze, sunny).

We continued to find wonderful little restaurants that had great food, great service, and were interesting, unique, and not outrageously expensive. Pacific Grill did not disappoint--we tried to go here last time, but couldn't fit it in--this time it was top priority, foodwise. We also made a return visit to our favorite from our previous trip, Primo Grill, where we pretty much ordered what we did last time--a variety of appetizers followed by the prosciutto/fig marmalade/rosemary/goat cheese pizza.

Sunday morning we got up early and headed home...making the all-important pilgrimage to Rosalyn, WA, which plays the part of Cicely, AK in one of our favorite TV shows, Northern Exposure. It was too early to hit the gift shop so I'll have to wait until next visit for my t-shirt and coffee mug. As it turns out, we're rewatching the series and are currently in the midst of season four.



We then proceeded to follow the Oregon Trail in the reverse direction, stopping occasionally at the historic sites. I am newly inspired to find a diary from someone who migrated west along the Oregon Trail. It's a topic of great interest and yet I still haven't read much about it...yet.

We stopped for the night in Twin Falls, ID, where we discovered that the Snake River had carved a magnificent gorge. It was absolutely breathtaking, and we found a restaurant with a terrific gorge view where we could relax and unwind after a long day of driving.

The second day of driving took us across Wyoming, where we must have encountered roughly 100,000 orange road construction barrels. I think there might have been 10 miles of highway that wasn't under construction along I-80, but I doubt it was that high a number.

Now we're home, and I'm ready to get serious about getting some posts up on all the great reading I've been doing, but first I have to go on another business trip tomorrow, and then I can write this weekend...I hope!