johnboystravelblog

Here are some various things I saw while in Port Townsend on Tuesday.  Because the air quality was poor I just stuck around town and kept the air in the car on “recirculate”.  I did do quite a bit of walking but the air didn’t seem quite as bad as it was on Monday.

This is one of the nicer Victorian-style buildings in town.  It was having some paint freshened up.

And this is the County Courthouse, one of the oldest municipal buildings in the State of Washington.  It is only three blocks from the water and the streets quickly increase in elevation so the only way to get a picture of the front is to look up.

These are two donkeys on the property where I am staying.  My Airbnb hostess is a veterinarian and has several horses, pot-bellied pigs, and these donkeys on the property.  The one on the left is the mother and the little one is just a few weeks old (and has LOTS of energy!).

And I have seen these lots of places but this is the “cleanest” one I’ve come across.  This is a tsunami warning tsiren.  It is one of 58 scattered strategically along the Pacific coast of Washington and the waterways leading into Puget Sound.

Here are some of the different boats I have seen while in Port Townsend.  I arrived here on Monday and while I was waiting for my Airbnb host to get home from work I drove up to a city park along the Strait of Juan de Fuca (where it becomes Admiralty Inlet).  The further east I drove on Monday the worse the air quality was.  This was looking north at around 5pm local time.  There is a large cargo ship right in the center of the photo.  My guess is that it was maybe a mile or two away (hard to tell over water).

The rest of these were taken Monday.  Air quality seemed a little better today here in town but it went way downhill over where I had been in Port Angeles.  Their Air Quality Index rating today was “Unhealthy”.

This was looking south from downtown over the Admiralty Inlet (which leads to Puget Sound, near Seattle).

These were two small yachts near the Point Hudson Marina adjacent to the downtown business district.

I had never seen a wooden kayak before but here was one on top of a car parked in town.

And when walked through Fort Worden State Park to get to the Point Wilson Lighthouse here were some more in a campground – a triple-seater and two singles.

And this is a high-powered whale watching boat which was zipping along on the Strait of Juan de Fuca, probably heading for Seattle.

And no, I’m not being crass.  A “spit” is a beach landform located off coasts or lake shores.  I didn’t know that either until last night when I looked it up.

Sunday, since I didn’t go to Hurricane Ridge in Olympic National Park I decided to head east of Port Angeles to check out some other things.  One place I stopped was the Dungeness National Wildlife Refuge near Sequim (pronounced “Sqwim”), Washington.

After a brief walk on the primary trail I could look out over the spit (kind of a skinny peninsula – a VERY skinny peninsula) and see this lighthouse, probably 4 miles in the distance (the sign said 5+ but I had walked a ways from the parking lot).

I wasn’t about to march all the way out there so here are some photos I found online:

(Photo credit: lerrophotography.com   flickr)

And if you want to see something really impressive, come out here before wildfire season starts and you may luck out on a clear day to see Mount Baker, which is 10,781 feet tall and, as the crow flies, 75 miles away, in the background:

(Photo credit: shootthesun.com)

I have seen several photos and paintings of this and apparently it is not trick photography or special effects.  I also saw a similar photo of the Coast Guard base in Port Angeles, which is out on a peninsula, with Mount Baker in the background.  Not too shabby, eh?

Mostly seagulls but here are some of the critters I saw on the estuary and bay while near downtown Port Angeles on Sunday:

This is a Brandt’s cormorant:

And this is an otter, probably a River Otter:

And more seagulls.  I was amazed how smooth the water surface was, both on Sunday when I took these and on Monday morning before I left town to head over to Port Townsend.  Some of these were on an estuary (near land, where fresh water meets salt water) and some were further out in the bay.  I think the Strait of Juan de Fuca, in general, is not as rough as the Pacific (at least this far “inland”), plus the peninsula where the Coast Guard base is also helps protect the bar and harbor close to the city.

Sunday ended up being another low key day without much travel.  The air quality was noticeable worse (I had heard on the radio that this would be the case) and I delayed my planned trip up to Hurricane Ridge in Olympic National Park because conditions up there didn’t look good in the morning and I completely lost sight of it by early afternoon.  I am posting this Monday morning and today and tomorrow are “air quality alert” days so it doesn’t sound like things will improve until Wednesday at the earliest.  A friend sent me an EPA Air Quality website and yesterday Seattle and Olympia were in Unhealthy status and Spokane was in Hazardous status!  I plan to be in Spokane for 5 days over the Labor Day weekend so hopefully things improve before then, otherwise I will be spending my days indoors (getting caught up on blog posts).

I spent a good bit of the day Sunday down along the water in Port Angeles.

This was from an observation platform on the west side of town.  It overlooks an estuary where there several (but not an overwhelming number) of seagulls, Canadian geese and an occasional cormorant hanging around.

Out in the bay I could see a Coast Guard ship docked:

To the west there were a few large ships docked, and there is a large building where a company which builds yachts is based:

I hung out there for quite a while, just watching the birds fly and float on the water.  There were also huge schools of fish which came close to the shore and I could see them just below the surface of the water.  They created a very subtle ripple effect on the surface, which is what drew my attention to them.  I am going to post some bird and critter pictures in another post.

After a while I walked a few blocks east to another observation platform and to where the ferry dock is.  Later in the day a large ferry, the Coho, arrived, unloaded it’s passengers and vehicles and loaded a set which was waiting to go north into Canada.

This location also gave me a nice view of part of the downtown business district.

And also a view of a small fishing boat, docked near where the ferry port was.

Saturday as I drove out to Cape Flattery on this nice scenic road I saw this bald eagle perched at the top of a tree overlooking the Strait.

Saturday I took a nice scenic drive west of Port Angeles out to Cape Flattery.  Highway 112, also known as the Strait of Juan de Fuca Scenic Byway, runs mostly along the shore of that large body of water which separates Washington state from Canada.  There were a few small villages and a fishing harbor and towards the end of the road I entered the Makah Indian Reservation.  I stopped at their museum, which was very interesting but they didn’t allow photography, and I had to buy a $10 Recreational Permit in order to take the 3/4 mile trail out to Cape Flattery.

Here are some of the things I saw towards the end of that trail:

There are several things which bring people out to Cape Flattery.  Here is one of them:

You are looking at the furthest northwest point in the contiguous United States.  Here is a shot with a person in it:

Here is a shot looking down through the tree at the ocean:

And off to the left:

And off to the right:

Another thing that brings people out to Cape Flattery is the incredible view of the lighthouse, which sits on Tatoosh Island, just a half mile offshore:

As you may have guessed from the other photos in this post, it was a tad foggy.  While I could see and hear waves crashing up against something I couldn’t see the island and certainly couldn’t see the lighthouse.  I waited about an hour and a half and if anything, the visibility got worse.  It’s a shame because here is what I would have seen on a clear day:

(Photo credit: 123rf.com)

(Photo credit: MichaelNW-Lens  flickr.com)

(Photo credit and copyright: welcomia  photolib.noaa.gov)

The lighthouse was built in 1854 and is 65 feet tall.  It is no longer in use.

 

 

 

Saturday, as I returned to Port Angeles from my trek out to Cape Flattery, I passed through this section of Highway 101 again.  There is a long stretch of the highway which is sandwiched between the north perimeter of Olympic National Park and the southern shore of Lake Crescent, a huge, deep lake west of Port Angeles.  I didn’t stop to take any pictures on Friday because smoke from various wildfires had reduced the visibility of the far off mountains but the scene was much better on Saturday so I made a few stops.

And like the Sol Duc River which I had seen up close on Friday, the water in this lake is incredibly clear:

The lake is so big it is impossible to capture it all in one shot from this close.  Here is a two-shot panorama, looking left to right:

Would it surprise you if I told you that the photo above was taken just a few hundred feet from the Pacific Ocean?  Let me turn 90 degrees to the left of where I took that shot to show you proof:

Hard to see a sunlit area in the distance when looking at it from a shaded area so let me zoom in on the right side of the wooden fence and the tall metal sign pole next to it:

And there it is!  As I drove north on Highway 101 Friday there was about a 12-mile section of the road which runs parallel and almost directly adjacent to the beach, although it most places you can’t see it unless you look through the breaks in the trees.  Unlike in California and Oregon, where 101 is usually very close to the ocean, the majority of Highway 101 on Washington state runs well inland.

And before I turned inland at Ruby Beach I spotted this off the coast:

That is the lighthouse out on Destruction Island, which is about 3 1/2 miles offshore.  Here are some pictures I found online:

(Photo credit: gwlocphoto George White Location Photography)

(Photo credit: http://www.noaa.gov)

The lighthouse sits on a roughly 30 acre island.  It was first lit in 1892 and is 94 feet tall.  It’s use was discontinued in 2008 and it, and the island it sits on, are not open to the public.

Friday as I traveled north on Highway 101 I stopped in the little town of Forks, which is located inland.  I also took Highway 110, just north of Forks, about 15 miles to the even smaller town of La Push, located out on the coast.

I didn’t know about this until I saw a brochure earlier in the trip but Forks and La Push were the actual towns where the Twilight books and movies were set.  For those of you who may not be familiar with Twilight, it was a series of movies (based on the books) which told the love story of a high school romance which developed between Bella, the damsel seeking affection, and Edward and Jacob who were competing for her hand in marriage.  Oh, and to keep the story interesting for a few followup books and movie sequels, Edward was a vampire and Jacob was a werewolf.  No need to issue a spoiler alert, the first movie came out ten years ago and you either know about this or you don’t.

Evidently teenage girls have traveled here from all over the world, as evidenced by the “pin maps” on the wall of the Forks Visitor Center:

Never in my life have I seen one of these maps with so many pins in them!  I tried to get a shot showing that in some places they were 2 or 3 deep but I couldn’t get the right effect.  I didn’t put a pin in because: a) there wasn’t room, and b) I thought if I did it might be the straw that broke the camel’s back and the map would tumble to the floor and there’d be pins EVERYWHERE.

Well, before you drop everything to make your pilgrimage to Forks and La Push be advised – (here’s your spoiler alert) exactly none of the scenes in the movies were filmed here.  Zip, zero, nada.  While footage was taken of the exterior of the town entry sign, the high school, the grocery store where Bella shopped (I bought a sandwich there, not knowing I was on hallowed ground), and the hardware store next door where Bella worked, the actual scenes “from those places” were filmed in other parts of Washington, Oregon and up in Vancouver, Canada.  Even the exterior beach scene wasn’t filmed in La Push or just up the beach at Rialto Beach, but near Cannon Beach down in Oregon.

For whatever reason the author of the books set the story in these actual places.  Jacob (the werewolf character) was a member of the Quileute Indian Tribe, the actual tribe on whose land La Push sits, as were members of his werewolf “pack”.

One last piece of marketing (the Visitor Center sells copies of the books, movies, magnets and these):