Tuesday I drove up and spent a good part of the day in this harbor town a short distance from where I’m staying in Grayland, Washington. As I determined shortly after I arrived, it is a big fishing port. This was the part of the harbor I saw first, with almost all the boats docked being fishing boats of various sizes.
One of the largest I saw was the Sea Clipper, which appeared to be unloading it’s bounty.
It appeared that large conveyor belts were moving the fish to a series of red and blue plastic containers:
Of course when I took that the flow of fish had stopped. There was a guy shoveling huge amounts of ice into the containers to keep the fish cold, and another guy was driving a forklift, moving the, then very heavy, containers to a warehouse. Here come more fish…
Near where I was watching all this, these guys were putting their private fishing boat back on it’s trailer:
The name of their boat?
And I saw this makeshift sign near the boat ramp:
After spending a little more time watching the activity in that part of the harbor I drove out to the main part of town where there are some small motels and several restaurants. I learned that that is where personal pleasure boats are docked and the harbor was much bigger than I first thought. This is from a 3-story tall observation platform located at the end of the main street through town:
That platform also gave me a great view of Grays Harbor, and all the fishing boats coming and going. There was also a huge cargo ship, the Longview Logger, anchored out in the harbor. It looked very much like the ship I saw being loaded with logs down in Coos Bay, Oregon.
And I saw this tugboat, pulling a barge:
There is a Maritime Museum in town:
And of course there were shorebirds:
There were a few seagulls in the mix but these were mostly Brandt’s cormorants (with black bills) and Double-Crested cormorants (with yellow bills).
Wednesday I will be driving around to the northeast side of Grays Harbor and will be staying near the town of Hoquiam.
