Port Townsend, Washington

I've had a bit of trouble getting into Blogger the last few days -- I kept getting a page that told me I had to have Cookies enabled (they were) and then listed several tweaks to play with to try to fix the problem. I fiddled with settings and the cache. Nothing. So I decided to delete all my google cookies, and voila! Access again. I did notice that I had a cookie from Google.CA (Canada) which I suspect was the culprit.

In the last blog, we had just left Hyder, AK in the middle of a torrential downpour. The next day at 8 AM the single road out of Hyder/Stewart was closed, the rain eventually washing out a bridge and tearing out huge hunks of the roadbed. The time span until reopening? Unknown. About 16 tourist rigs were stranded, but they eventually were rescued when supply barges were sent in by sea, and their RVs put on the barges for the return trip. The road just recently reopened, sort-of -- there is only one lane open, and only 2 or 3 trips per day are allowed, tagging behind a "follow me" vehicle. We just barely missed being stranded there, too.

We were glad to get back to the U.S.A, although we did have a 50 minute wait at the border. Once we made it to the agent, we passed through in record time. On to the State of Washington!

Northwestern Washington is a beautiful, watery, hippyesque place with lots of muffins and coffee, coffee, coffee. One of our favorite towns was Port Townsend, self-described as a Victorian Seaport and Arts Community. Old historic buildings, friendly people, and lots of artsy-fartsy interesting shops were everywhere.

The first thing you may notice about the town is a huge cloud of steam rising above the skyline. This is a paper mill near the water:

Our "lunch" was eaten in a 1950s cafe with a juke box that still played 45s, a soda fountain that served phosphates and egg creams, and a hispanic waitress who seemed very out of place but was extremely nice. John had a banana split, and I had a turtle sundae:

They apparently have some customers who aren't clear about those new fangled Seat-Cover-Thingies:

The town has a lot of docks lining the waterfront:

And people go to the parks for walking, biking, or photo sessions:

They had a "Speakers Corner," where this fellow was speaking to passersby. We expected a a religious message -- but we got instead the glories of Freedom of Speech!

Art was predominantly placed on the street:

And our favorite browsing store was this antique auto supply store -- headlights, mirrors, manuals, and all sorts of miscellaneous parts for antique cars were for sale, along with some antique cars:

When we had first reached the town, we had parked at a two hour meter just as the tire chalker/ticket writer was approaching our car. We stopped to chat, and he asked us about our domicile in Texas. When we left, he told us not to worry about the time -- he would make sure that our car was not ticketed or towed. How nice is that! We found all of Port Townsend to be a colorful, fun, and friendly place to stop for the afternoon. And we did make it back in just under 2 hours.